The Girl with the Golden Hair

The Girl with the Golden Hair was a mini-musical that ABBA created, and performed during each of their 1977 European and Australian concert tour shows. Benny and Björn wanted to offer more than "a run through of their hits and assorted album tracks", and this new path "symbolised the boys' departure from the pop mainstream". Although the songs received a "less-than-tumultuous" reception during the first performances of the mini-musical, three of the tracks ("Thank You for the Music", "I'm a Marionette", and "I Wonder (Departure)" were featured as the final tracks on ABBA: The Album in order to have them immortalised. This was the first time a "programmatic theme" had been given to an ABBA album. A fourth song, "Get on the Carousel", was also written for the musical, but was instead replaced by an up-tempo song called "Hole in Your Soul", which was essentially a working of the former work, with "a substantial part of the melody [being] incorporated into [its] middle eight". However, parts of it have survived due to the song's appearance in ABBA: The Movie.

This "25-minute opus" had a thin storyline about a talented "small-town girl leaving her hometown" on her "quest for stardom", and each song is supposed to represent a different part of her personality. Agnetha and Frida both played the woman, sometimes by themselves and at other times together. They wore matching blonde wigs and costumes "for optimum dramatic effect".

The three songs to be featured on the album were all released as B-sides to ABBA: The Album singles. "I'm a Marionette" was coupled with "Take a Chance on Me", "I Wonder" was paired with "The Name of the Game", and "Thank You for the Music" became the B-side for "Eagle".

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