"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" was written and composed by
Benny Andersson and
Björn Ulvaeus, with the lead vocal sung by
Agnetha Fältskog. Fältskog, as the narrator, weaves the image of a lonely woman who longs for a romantic relationship and views her loneliness as a forbidding darkness of night, even drawing parallels to how the happy endings of movie stars are so different from her existence. The melody line of the song was played on an
ARP Odyssey synthesizer. Originally, ABBA had recorded another song, "Rubber Ball Man", which was planned as a single. It featured the typical "ABBA-arrangement" with both Fältskog and
Anni-Frid Lyngstad on lead vocals and the use of classical strings. This song was also performed by the group during rehearsals for its 1979 tour as "Under My Sun". However, the group felt that "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!", with its disco sound, would be a better choice, and thus, "Rubber Ball Man" remained nothing more than a demo. The song came about after Benny and Bjorn heard
Donna Summer's hit
Hot Stuff, and upon hearing it, it inspired the riffs, melody and sentiment of the song with Agnetha yearning for 'a man after midnight' whilst Donna was in need of some 'hot stuff'
Single version The single version of this song, which was released in its full length of 4:45 everywhere else in the world, was released in the United States and Canada in an edited format, being just 3:36 in length. This was done by removing the first half of the opening instrumental, the first four of the eight bars of the instrumental bridge between the second and final chorus, and fading the song out early. It is believed the edit was done by
Atlantic, ABBA's North American record label and not Polar, hence the reason why it was available only in the US and Canada. This single version has never appeared on any commercial CD issued by Polar/Universal to date and along with the US promo edit of "
Chiquitita", it marked the only time Atlantic ever commercially released an edited version of an ABBA single while they had the North American rights to release ABBA recordings. As of September 2021, it is ABBA's tenth-biggest song in the UK, including both pure sales and digital streams. The single was never released by Polar Music in the group's native Sweden, instead being featured on the
Greatest Hits Vol. 2 album, which did get a Swedish release. While Polar released the single in neighbouring Norway, Denmark, and Finland, copies of these versions were not made available in the Swedish record stores, who thus arranged to import copies of the United Kingdom version on Epic Records. Sales of these imports were sufficient for the single to reach no. 16 on the sales chart in Sweden. On October 4, 2024, "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" was reissued digitally as a promotional single for the compilation album
The Singles: The First Fifty Years. This release was accompanied by a
Dolby Atmos remix of the song (the third ABBA release to receive this treatment, after "
Waterloo" and
Voyage) and a new 4K remaster of the music video. On July 20, 2025, "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" surpassed 1 Billion streams on Spotify, becoming the second ABBA song to reach that milestone, following "Dancing Queen".
Spanish version "
¡Dame! ¡Dame! ¡Dame!" is the Spanish-language version of the song. The song was released as a single to promote
Gracias Por La Música in Latin America and other Spanish-speaking countries. == Reception ==