96. I'm a Marionette (The Album 1977)

 

I actually have a quite good memory of hearing I'm a Marionette for the first time. When I became an Abba fan in the late 1970s I had Arrival and The Album recorded on a 60 min cassette with both albums missing their final songs (as they were both a little over 30 minutes long). So it wasn't until I found I'm a Marionette in a jukebox at some gas station on the b-side of Take a Chance On Me single that I heard that missing track for the first time and it took quite a while (maybe a year or two) until I finally bought The Album and could listen to I'm a Marionette like the rest of the tracks. 

This rare occasion of hearing this song for the first time and then not being able to hear it again for a while grew an air of mystery around it. And as the song was uncharacteristically dark (drawn from the Girl With the Golden Hair mini-musical Abba played during their tour) it felt very strangely intriguing to me.

When I finally bought The Album, and spun it on my turntable repeatedly, the mystery wore off and I actually got quite bored of I'm a Marionette. I felt it was repetitive and boring, and as this ranking shows, the song fell close to the bottom of my list of Abba songs.

As I wrote before I got inspiration of writing this blog from various YouTube videos with new music fans reacting to Abba songs for the first time. One of the songs that is often highlighted in these videos is I'm a Marionette, which many youtubers, particularly the hard rock fans, praise for its sinister atmosphere and the use of the "evil chords" in its chorus. So if I tried to come to this song from the cold, as if I hadn't heard it before, how would I react?



I'm a Marionette is not your everyday Abba hit. It is not cheery, chirpy, feel-good pop song but a dark and theatrical showstopper. If you listen to it in the background, in the car or in the middle of household chores, it might pass you by as a loud and even unpleasant four minutes. That is maybe how I've listened to it since the novelty of hearing the song for the first time wore off and that is why I haven't regarded it as the "brilliant masterpiece" as many of the contemporary reviewers see it.

Now with nothing else going on, headphones on my head I can return to the day I got the Album and listened to the long awaited final track of the album. I'm a Marionette has almost everything that I love in Abba. First of all the song is a masterclass of how to build a tension and atmosphere in a pop song by arranging. The sound of the musicians of the band melts so well together with the orchestra (arranged by the invaluable Abba bassist Rutger Gunnarsson) building the tension of the song verse by verse. I cannot stop marveling how the sound of this recording is created (kudos also to the Abba engineer Michael Tretow) and how the massive sound, different details in the orchestral arrangement (with the evil "tritone" chord progression used in the refrains) and the irregular time signatures almost roll over the actual song.

This is also the problem of this song. To me the melody is the most important thing in a song and while this is a good song, it is not on par with everything else going on in the recording of it. This makes, at least for me, the song not last many repetitive listens as a successful pop song usually does. So I grow tired easily hearing this song. It is masterfully crafted pop track, almost a rock song, but after listening to it several times before writing this article it might take a while before I can listen to it again.

But in the song's defence, I'm a Marionette is not meant to be a chart-busting pop song. It is one of the few attempts by its writers Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus to branch out to the musical theatre, in which they would become successful during the following decades. In that genre I'm a Marionette is a very good track. And also a very surprising and inventive way to end Abba's fifth album.

Pay attention to:
  • How the arrangement builds and builds from verse to verse
  • How the chord progression called "tritone" is used in the refrain to create tension and unease
Coming up...You Owe Me One


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