"Eagle" is a song that was recorded in 1977 by the Swedish pop groupABBA. It was the first selection on the group's fifth album, , in terms of the album's sequence of songs, and the longest selection they ever recorded. The third and last official single from , it was released only in a limited number of territories as a single and in France as a double A-side with "Thank You for the Music." "Eagle" was not released as a single in the United Kingdom. It was meant to be a U.S. single, but then withdrawn.
History
"Eagle" was written and composed by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, who provided its music and its lyrics respectively, as a kind of tribute to a band that the two men admired at the time, The Eagles. The recording, which commenced on 1 June 1977, had the working titles of "High, High" and "The Eagle." Lyricist Ulvaeus was inspired by Richard Bach's 1970 novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull when he wrote the lyrics for this song. In later years, music critics have hailed "Eagle" as one of ABBA's more outstanding tracks in terms of lyrics.
Reception
"Eagle" was not a major success on the charts. One reason was that the song was already available on ; another was the limited release only in countries like Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland. To make the song more radio-friendly it was heavily edited down from 5:51 to 4:25 by omitting an instrumental break and the third chorus. Australia and France even got an edit from the edit, with the song fading shortly after the 2nd chorus making it last just 3:33, 2:18 shorter than the album version. It was withdrawn as a single in the United States. The single was released in May 1978 to fill the gap between the previous single, "Take a Chance on Me" and the next, a completely new track, eventually titled "Summer Night City." The B-side of "Eagle," "Thank You for the Music", was later released as a single outright in a few countries after the group had disbanded, namely in the UK, where "Eagle" had not been released as a single.
Music video
The single was promoted with a music video directed by Lasse Hallström, while an earlier, much more interesting video in terms of special effects was included as a part of .
1999 re-edit
The original 4:25 single edit was issued on CD for the first time in 1993 on the compilation . However, for the 1999 re-release of this album, plus subsequent releases, a new version based on the 1978 edit was created. Unfortunately, this edit left out a vital instrumental-only section at the end of the second chorus prior to the closing instrumental, thereby sounding disjointed. The original edit--or at least an exact re-creation of it--was finally issued again on the deluxe version of ABBA: The Album in 2007.
The song was covered by the German heavy metal band Sargant Fury on their 1993 album Little Fish and also included on the 2001 tribute albumABBAMetal, which was also released as A Tribute to ABBA.
The Finnish rock band YUP included a cover of the song as a hidden track on their 2001 greatest hits compilation Hajota ja hallitse 1993–2001.
The American indie-gospel band Danielson recorded a cover version on their 2009 7-inch single, "Moment Soakers."
Appearances in other media
The original ABBA recording features in the film , which was released in 1977.
