Dancing Queen

Recording began on 4 August 1975 at Glen Studios under the demo title Boogaloo. Andersson and Ulvaeus took George McCrae's Rock Your Baby as their model for the rhythm, with extra influence from the drumming on Dr. John's 1972 album Gumbo. Fältskog and Lyngstad added vocals in September, and Andersson and Ulvaeus were still adding overdubs in December. Stig Anderson suggested the title and wrote the lyrics with Ulvaeus. Lyngstad cried when Andersson brought home a tape of the backing track. Fältskog said they knew at once it would be massive.

ABBA wanted it as the follow-up to Mamma Mia, but Anderson insisted on Fernando in March 1976, so Dancing Queen waited for release. It was performed in public for the first time on 18 June 1976 at a televised gala at the Royal Swedish Opera, the evening before the wedding of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Silvia Sommerlath, with ABBA as the only pop act and dressed in baroque costume. The single went on sale in Sweden on 16 August 1976 with That's Me on the B-side. Lasse Hallström directed the video, filmed at Alexandra's discotheque in Stockholm.

It was number one in the UK for six weeks and topped the charts in 15 other countries as well as the United States. Its UK sales stood at 1.65 million as of September 2021, more than any other ABBA song there. Writing in Pitchfork, Simon Goddard called it one of the greatest pop records ever made and heard both joy and sorrow in it. Ulvaeus told the Guardian that the music usually came before the lyrics, that he saw images while listening, and that the song carries a Nordic melancholic feeling. Chris Stein admitted trying to replicate it for Blondie's Dreaming, and Elvis Costello was inspired by its descending piano chords for Oliver's Army.

It appears in 99 of the 273 logged ABBA setlists that list songs, the earliest a television studio in Sydney on 11 March 1976 and the latest the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo on 27 March 1980. Many of these entries are television studio performances. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015 and entered the National Recording Registry with the rest of Arrival in 2024.