(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.
[3] 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.
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.
[4] The single was never released by Polar Music in the group's native Sweden, instead being featured on the Greatest Hits Vol.
The song was released as a single to promote Gracias Por La Música in Latin America and other Spanish-speaking countries.
Cash Box called it "another exercise of sparkling euro-pop, with the slightest hint of boogie bottom to give the song an edge.
1 in Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, and Switzerland, while reaching the top 3 in Austria, West Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Norway.
(A Man After Midnight)" was recorded in Spanish for the Latin American promotion that started in early 2000.
The video had high rotation on several music channels beginning in the year 2000, but it was not as successful as the first singles.
1 in France, dislodging Star Academy's previous hit, "La Musique (Angelica)", and stayed atop for two weeks.
In the film, only the chorus is sung while the rest of the song is instrumental, much like the original stage play.
On the soundtrack, Seyfried sings the complete song as a solo performance, and also does the same in a music video to promote the movie.
American singer and actress Cher covered the song on her album Dancing Queen, released on 28 September 2018.
Writing for Rolling Stone, Brittany Spanos felt that "working with producer Mark Taylor who helped seal Cher's legacy with the game-changing "Believe" in the late Nineties, she finds subtle changes that update ABBA classics without totally stripping them of the catchiness that made those songs beloved hits well beyond their heyday.
(A Man After Midnight)", "SOS" and "Mamma Mia" are given just enough of a knob turn that they're transformed from upbeat FM radio pop into club bangers, pulsating with every beat.
[68] Tribute group Abbacadabra released a cover of the song on their album Abbasalute through Almighty Records in 1992.
[70] A Chinese version of the song known as "恼人的秋风" or "Annoying Autumn Wind" was popular in China and Taiwan in the 1980s.
[75] The Easter egg has been removed since version man-db 2.8.0 after it had been discovered as an annoyance in a software automatic test system on 20 November 2017 and brought to broad attention on the Stack Exchange Q&A network site dedicated to Unix & Linux.
[75] In 2005, the song was sampled by Madonna, who used it on her worldwide hit single "Hung Up" from Confessions on a Dance Floor.
[77] Max stated that she listened to ABBA and Ace of Base during her childhood, and wanted to "add a little disco flair in there".