Secret Service – Flash in the Night
#quotefromthe80s
My despair was caught in motion
A face just barely true
Shadows in blue
A flash in the night
#SecretService #FlashInTheNight
Probably the Swedish secret services are not among the most famous in the world, but at the beginning of the 80s a Swedish group called Secret Service was certainly famous. Their story began in the mid-70s on the initiative of Ola Håkansson, executive of a Swedish record company and singer of some success since the 60s. In 1976 he had met another key figure in the history of this group, keyboardist Tim Norell. From then on the two had founded various groups with increasing success, but more or less limited to their native Sweden. And during the 80s Sweden was really able to follow up on Abba’s experience and success, not just with Secret Service, but with Frida and I know there’s something going on, Europe and The Final Countdown, Roxette and The Look or Listen to Your Heart, for example.
After attending a local festival in 1979 where they didn’t win, Ola didn’t lose heart and changed the group’s name to Secret Service, and with Tim they recruited new musicians.
I must say that the name Secret Service is quite appropriate for a couple of mysteries surrounding the group. First, Tim was a rather mysterious character of his own: although he was openly part of Secret Service and was mentioned on their albums, he never appeared on videos or even in photos on the covers of the songs, a bit like a real secret agent. Secret Service immediately enjoyed success both in Sweden and abroad, but their popularity exploded at the end of 1981 thanks to their second album, Cutting Corners, which even went gold thanks to the huge success of this song, Flash in the Night.
The song was written a few months earlier, and if we look at the names of the authors, we find something rather strange: the music is written by Ola Håkansson and Tim Norell, but lyrics are written by a third person, Björn Håkansson, sometimes written with just one s. And here there is an aura of mystery, because some sites report how Björn Håkansson is not connected with Ola Håkansson, and was actually born in 1945. But if we go to see Ola’s biography, he too was born in 1945, and it seems that his full name is… Ola Björn Håkansson! In short, for music credits he used the first name, but as the author of the lyrics he indicated himself with the second name! He too was a perfect secret service agent! By the way, I realized that this song is sometimes confused with another song from the 80s, Midnight Man, perhaps because it was sung by Flash and the Pan, which caused a bit of confusion with Flash in the Night.
The video is very suggestive, shot in early 1982 in a cold, dark and snowy Stockholm, with scenes shot mainly at Stockholm Central Station and at “BZ”, one of the most important nightclubs in the city at the time. The scenes are perfect not only to give the idea of life in that cold capital, with the scene of the girl skating on the lake in the dark, but also to highlight even more the electronic sounds that surely played a large part in the success of this song.
In fact, Flash in the Night entered the top ten in a dozen European countries, and represented Secret Service’s most successful moment. In the following years, in fact, Ola and Tim began to work as authors and producers for other artists, and this inevitably led to a slowdown in the activity of Secret Service, who still recorded other songs and albums until 1987.
In short, Ola and Tim were perhaps somewhat mysterious guys and maybe wanted to play secret services, but the success of Flash in The Night made them visible and known all over the world!
Secret Service on Wikipedia
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