Dream World (ABBA song)

Infobox Single
Name = Dream World
Artist = ABBA
from Album = Thank You for the Music


Recorded = September - October 1978
Released = 1994
Length = 3:36
Format = Single
Genre = Pop
Label = Polar Music
Producer = Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus
Last single = "Thank You for the Music"
(1983)
This single = "Dream World"
(1994)
Next single = "Put On Your White Sombrero"
(1996)

"Dream World" (originally "Dream Land") is a song recorded in September 1978 by Swedish pop group ABBA, with shared vocals by Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad and solo passage by Agnetha. The song was recorded during sessions for the "Voulez-Vous" album. Composers Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus decided, however, that "Dream World" was not suitable for release, and instead, agreed to scrap the recording.

The melody and chord sequence of the middle-eight of "Dream World" were re-used, with different lyrics, as the bridge for the middle-eight of the song "Does Your Mother Know," later released as the second single from the "Voulez-Vous" album.

In the 1980s, the song was heard for the first time in a Swedish radio programme featuring ABBA's engineer Michael B. Tretow, and subsequently found its way onto a bootleg album.

In 1994, "Dream World" was released in Sweden, Germany and Australia as a promotional-only CD-single with other ABBA rarities to advertise the "Thank You for the Music" four CD box-set, which also contained the track.

The version of the song released in 1994 differs from the version heard in the radio show in that its fairground-like synthesiser intro fades in rather than starting abruptly.

It was reported just before its 1994 release that Benny and Björn were in the studio remixing the track, and hence it is most probably a new mixdown of the song done expressly in 1994. Indeed it exhibits a certain "digital" sound suggesting it was mixed down to a digital recorder as opposed to previously released songs from this period which were mixed onto analog tape.

ingle track listing

# "Dream World"
# "Put On Your White Sombrero"
# "Just Like That (Edit)"
# "Thank You for the Music" (Doris Day version)

References

* http://www.abba4therecord.com/cdsingles_results.php
* Voulez-Vous (2001 Remastered Edition); CD liner notes by Carl Magnus Palm.
* Dream World (1994 German Promotional CDS); liner notes.
* http://carlmagnuspalm.com/abba/thankyoustory/tyftmstory8.html