Reception
"Eagle" was not a major success on the charts. One reason was that the song was already available on The Album, another was the limited release only in countries like Australia, Austria, Belgium (where it did top the charts), 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 3rd 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. The single was promoted with a music video by Lasse Hallström, while an earlier, much more interesting video in terms of special effects was included as a part of ABBA: The Movie.
The single was released in May 1978 to fill the gap between the previous single, "Take a Chance on Me" & the next, a completely new track, eventually called "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.
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