F major · Camelot 7B · 136 BPM
Slipping Through My Fingers
by ABBA
- 136
- BPM
- F major
- Key
- 7B
- Camelot
- 47
- Danceability
- 77
- Acousticness
Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson wrote "Slipping Through My Fingers" about a mother's regret at how quickly her daughter is growing up, and the lack of time they have spent together as the girl goes to school. The inspiration was Ulvaeus' and Agnetha Fältskog's daughter, Linda Ulvaeus, who was seven at the time the song was written. Fältskog took the lead vocals when ABBA recorded it for their album The Visitors, released in November 1981.
The album arrived during a period when the group's music had turned darker and more introspective, a shift that reflected the dissolution of both marriages within the band, Fältskog's to Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid Lyngstad's to Andersson. ABBA had formed in Stockholm in 1972 and won the Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden in 1974 with "Waterloo". By the time The Visitors appeared, the group was a year away from disbanding in December 1982.
"Slipping Through My Fingers" had an unusual release history in Japan, where it first appeared on promotional records by The Coca-Cola Company. A 7" vinyl followed there in June 1981, issued as a single-sided picture disc with a sleeve featuring a drawing of the group. A picture disc ABBA compilation LP, also titled "Slipping Through My Fingers", used the same cover art.
Slipping Through My Fingers runs at 136 BPM, the tempo of techno, trance and big-room dance. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.76 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 441 ms. It is in F major, Camelot 7B, which shares its notes with D minor and mixes cleanly with Bb major and C major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.