A cover of Dancing Queen? I got 'cher cover . . .

This song is near and dear to my heart, and so I've taken the time to come up with a pretty decent solo acoustic version of this. Here goes:

First of all, play this song in the key of C using standard guitar tuning, as the chords used are mostly open chords and are well balanced. For the verse, we use the C, F, Am, Am7, G and Gsus4 chords. For this entire song, I like to play the F as an Fmaj7, which not only makes it easier to transition between the C and F chords (and the F and Dm7 chords later), but also gives the song a darker, more mellow feel.*


C                  F
Friday night . . .


C                  Am Am7
Looking . . .

G                  Gsus4 G Gsus4
Where . . .

G                  Am G Am
You come . . .

The other verse is the same. If you listen to the song, you'll note that the Am and Am7 are played for 2 beats only, as are the G and Gsus4. Also note that the G at "You come in . . ." is not exactly right, but if you fudge around with the fingering and the strumming rhythm you should be able to get away with it. (Footprints suggests using simply Gsus4 at this part, and I agree that it sounds pretty close, if not right on.) Next, we have the chorus, which features a tricky but highly satisfying chord, Dm7:


Am                 Dm7 G
And when . . .

            C      F C F
You are the Dancing . . .

C                  F C Am Am7
Dancing . . .

G                  E/E7 Am Am7 D
You . . .
             F     Dm7              
Ooh, Ooh-ooh See . . .

           C       F  C
Diggin . . .

Be sure to listen to the song so you can hear the exact timing of the F and C chords at the end of the chorus. After that, the rest of the song is the same. Note that at "you can jive" the E and E7 are fairly interchangeable. I like to play the E for the first chorus and then save the E7 for the second chorus.

There is one ~small~ problem with playing in the key of C: for a male vocalist, the "you're in the mood for a dance" part is sung quite low -- too low to perform without a microphone. For that reason, I recommend using a capo on the second fret, i.e., singing the song in the key of D.** Of course, the disadvantage of this is that you must have the upper vocal range to carry the tune at "You can dance . . .", which, reaching (I think) an A, is the vocal high-point of the song. If you are a tenor, then this shouldn't be a problem, and if you are a real tenor, then you can probably get away with putting the capo on the third or fourth fret.

Have fun performing this (as I always do) and let me have your comments on the transcription.


* Which I think is just right for a skinny, pale white boy like me when doing it solo. If you are a woman, or even a real live dancing queen, you might want to play the full F chord and sing the song with a more up-beat slant to it.

** Yes, if you really wanted, you could play the song in D with no capo at all, as the transposition is fairly simple. However, I wouldn't recommend this, as it forces you to play the nice pretty open Am/Am7 chords as barred Bm/Bm7 chords. Smoothly transitioning between Bm and Bm7 as barre chords is not easy, and not being able to play these two particular chords very well would take away from the overall sound of the song.

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