"Dancing Queen" features a shared lead vocal performance by Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. Its opening keyboard glissando and hummed vocals are one of the most identifiable sections of 1970s pop music.

Like a majority of ABBA songs, "Dancing Queen" is relatively straight-forward; it's about a seventeen-year-old girl having a good time on a Friday night. She is not fazed by the social and political pressures in her daily life as a teenager on the dancefloor, and all she wants to do is dance, no matter the identity of her dancing partner.