The Day Before You Came
Encyclopedia
"The Day Before You Came" is a song recorded and released by Swedish pop group ABBA
ABBA
ABBA was a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1970 which consisted of Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Fältskog...

. It was originally released in October 1982, as the first new song from ABBA's double compilation album The Singles: The First Ten Years
The Singles: The First Ten Years
The Singles: The First Ten Years is a double compilation album by the Swedish pop group ABBA, released in 1982.1982 was ABBA’s final year together as a group. They had originally intended to record a new studio album, like they had done almost every year since they first came together...

. It is historic as it was the final ABBA recording ever, although it was not their final song to be released.

History

After 1981's The Visitors
The Visitors (ABBA album)
The Visitors is the eighth and final studio album by Swedish pop group ABBA, released on November 30, 1981.With The Visitors, ABBA took several steps away from the "lighter" pop music they had recorded previously and the album is often regarded as a more complex and mature effort...

, both Björn Ulvaeus
Björn Ulvaeus
Björn Kristian Ulvaeus is a Swedish songwriter, composer, musician, writer, producer, a former member of the Swedish musical group ABBA , and co-composer of the musicals Chess, Kristina från Duvemåla, and Mamma Mia!...

 and Benny Andersson
Benny Andersson
Göran Bror "Benny" Andersson is a Swedish musician, composer, a former member of the Swedish musical group ABBA , and co-composer of the musicals Chess, Kristina från Duvemåla, and Mamma Mia!...

 took some time off to write new material, yet at the same time, they were beginning to create their first musical Chess
Chess (musical)
Chess is a musical with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, formerly of ABBA, and with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story involves a romantic triangle between two top players, an American and a Russian, in a world chess championship, and a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other;...

, alongside Tim Rice
Tim Rice
Sir Timothy Miles Bindon "Tim" Rice is an British lyricist and author.An Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Tony Award and Grammy Award-winning lyricist, Rice is best known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus...

. Meanwhile, Agnetha Fältskog
Agnetha Fältskog
Agnetha Åse Fältskog is a Swedish recording artist. She achieved success in Sweden after the release of her début album Agnetha Fältskog in 1968, and reached international stardom as a member of the pop group ABBA, which to date has sold over 375 million records worldwide, making it the fourth...

 and Anni-Frid Lyngstad
Anni-Frid Lyngstad
Anni-Frid Prinzessin Reuss von Plauen , is a Norwegian-born Swedish pop singer...

 slowly began their English-language solo careers. Fältskog recorded with fellow ABBA backing vocalist Tomas Ledin
Tomas Ledin
Tomas Folke Jonas Ledin is a Swedish singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer. He grew up in the town of Sandviken.Tomas Ledin started his career in 1972 when his first single, Då ska jag spela, was a big hit...

 the song "Never Again
Never Again (Agnetha song)
"Never Again" was written by Swedish singer and songwriter Tomas Ledin. He was already familiar with ABBA because both recorded for the same label and on top of that Tomas toured together with ABBA as a backing-singer in 1979 and 1980....

" (a hit in Europe) and played a leadingrole in the Swedish movie blockbuster called 'Raskenstam,' while Lyngstad worked with Phil Collins
Phil Collins
Philip David Charles "Phil" Collins, LVO is an English singer-songwriter, drummer, pianist and actor best known as a drummer and vocalist for British progressive rock group Genesis and as a solo artist....

 to produce her solo album Something's Going On
Something's Going On
Something's Going On was the first solo-album in English for ABBA singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad . Her previous albums had all been recorded in Swedish...

.

The group returned to Polar Studios in the summer of 1982 to record new songs for a planned follow up album to The Visitors. "The Day Before You Came" was one of six new songs that were recorded, with only two of them being released as singles and two as the B-sides. One of the other songs recorded, "I Am the City", would not see international release until 1993's More ABBA Gold CD, while another, "Just Like That", has never been released in its entirety (partially released in 1994).

"The Day Before You Came" was digitally recorded and mixed on August 20, 1982, with the working title of "Den Lidande Fågeln" (The Suffering Bird). Apart from Fältskog's lead vocal and an vocal line of Lyngstad mixed with the instrumental, the only instruments featured on the song were Andersson's synthesizer and drum machine, Ulvaeus' acoustic guitar and a snare drum by Åke Sundqvist.

According to Michael Tretow, ABBA's longtime sound engineer, this was the last ABBA song ever recorded. He further went on to state that Agnetha performed the lead without the lights on and said that mood had become sad and everybody in the studio knew that 'this was the end'.

On reissues of The Visitors on CD, "The Day Before You Came" has been added as one of the bonus tracks.

Music Video

A music video was produced to promote the single, featuring Agnetha flirting with a stranger on a train.

Reception

The single was officially released on October 18, 1982 with another new song, "Cassandra", as the B-side
A-side and B-side
A-side and B-side originally referred to the two sides of gramophone records on which singles were released beginning in the 1950s. The terms have come to refer to the types of song conventionally placed on each side of the record, with the A-side being the featured song , while the B-side, or...

. By this time, ABBA were experiencing a slow decline in UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 single sales. Accordingly, the single peaked at #32 there. Ironically in 1984 a cover by British synthpop duo Blancmange
Blancmange (band)
Blancmange are a British synthpop band who came to prominence with a string of hits in the early to mid 1980s.-Biography:Blancmange was formed in Harrow, Middlesex in 1979 by singer Neil Arthur and instrumentalists Stephen Luscombe and Laurence Stevens...

 charted higher than the ABBA recording reaching #22 on the UK charts.

ABBA's recording however, hit the top 5 in Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

, West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. It also reached #5 on the Adult Contemporary chart in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. The song was promoted by a music video
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...

 clip filmed on September 21, 1982, and directed by the team of Kjell Sundvall
Kjell Sundvall
Kjell Gösta Sundvall is a Swedish director/producer.Sundvall has directed a series of films about the police officer Martin Beck .-Selected filmography:*2011 - Jägarna 2...

 and Kjell-Åke Andersson, breaking ABBA's eight year directing relationship with Lasse Hallström
Lasse Hallström
Lars Sven "Lasse" Hallström is a Swedish film director. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for My Life as a Dog and later for The Cider House Rules .-Life and career:...

. The video featured Swedish actor Jonas Bergström as Fältskog's love interest.

In 2010, "The Day Before You Came" was positively reviewed by Stephen Emms for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

. Emms opined that the song "carries a sense of foreboding almost unparalleled in pop music." Emms continued to state that "the track's power lies in its layering of boredom and grandeur, transience and doom. It combines a rising sense of melancholy, both in its melody and production, with wistful, nostalgic lyrics." Emms also interpreted that the pathos is "heightened by an extended funereal instrumental coda which acts as one big question mark, leaving us with the feeling that this is not just a meditation on the quotidian but something greater, existential even. Is this imagined relationship, like the band itself, doomed?"

On December 5, 2010 on British TV for ITV1 a poll was made where fans could vote for "The Nation's Favourite ABBA song". Despite its poor chart position of #32 in the UK back in 1982, "The Day Before You Came" was voted the third favourite ABBA song.

On January 31, 2011 BBC Radio5 Live's "UP ALL NIGHT" with Dotun Adebayo presiding that night announced that the song had won the weekly vote of the nation and onto their ongoing list of virtual jukebox.

Chart positions

Chart (1982) Position
Australian Singles Chart
ARIA Charts
The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June...

48
Austrian Singles Chart
Ö3 Austria Top 40
Ö3 Austria Top 40 is the name of the official Austrian singles chart, as well as the radio show which presents it, aired Fridays on Hitradio Ö3. The show presents the Austrian singles, ringtones and downloads chart. It premiered on 26 November 1968 as Disc Parade and was presented by Ernst Grissemann...

16
Belgian Singles Chart 3
British Singles Chart 32
Canadian Adult Contemporary Chart 5
Dutch Singles Chart
Dutch Top 40
The Dutch Top 40 is a weekly music chart, which started as the "Veronica Top 40", because the offshore radio station Radio Veronica was the first to introduce it. It remained "The Veronica Top 40" until 1974, when the station was forced to stop broadcasting...

3
Finnish Singles Chart 2
French Singles Chart 38
German Singles Chart
Media Control Charts
The official music charts in Germany are gathered and published by the company Media Control GfK International on behalf of Bundesverband Musikindustrie...

5
Irish Singles Chart
Irish Singles Chart
The Irish Singles Chart is Ireland's music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association and compiled on behalf of the IRMA by Chart-Track. Chart rankings are based on sales, which are compiled through over-the-counter retail data captured...

12
Norwegian Singles Chart
VG-lista
VG-listen is a Norwegian record chart. It is weekly presented in the newspaper VG and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation program Topp 20. It is considered the primary Norwegian record chart, charting albums and singles from countries and continent around the world. The data is collected by...

5
Swedish Singles Chart 3
Swiss Singles Chart
Swiss Music Charts
The Swiss Music Charts are Switzerland's main music sales charts. The charts are a record of the highest-selling singles and albums in various genres in Switzerland.The Swiss Charts include:* Singles Top 75...

4

Cover versions

  • In 1984, two years after the song's original release, the first cover version
    Cover version
    In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...

     of "The Day Before You Came" was released by British synthpop duo Blancmange
    Blancmange (band)
    Blancmange are a British synthpop band who came to prominence with a string of hits in the early to mid 1980s.-Biography:Blancmange was formed in Harrow, Middlesex in 1979 by singer Neil Arthur and instrumentalists Stephen Luscombe and Laurence Stevens...

    . The cover charted at #22 in the UK singles chart
    UK Singles Chart
    The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...

     and was included in that year's Mange Tout
    Mange Tout
    Mange Tout is the second album by Blancmange. The full album title is - Mange Tout .-Side 1:# "Don't Tell Me" – 3:31# "Game Above My Head" – 3:58# "Blind Vision" – 3:56# "Time Became The Tide" – 4:49...

    album. Blancmange's version included a slight lyrical alteration. Instead of referencing novelist Marilyn French as the ABBA original does, Blancmange singer Neil Arthur sang "I must have read a while, the latest one by Barbara Cartland
    Barbara Cartland
    Dame Barbara Hamilton Cartland, DBE, CStJ , was an English author, one of the most prolific authors of the 20th century...

     or something in that style".
  • British singer/songwriter Tanita Tikaram
    Tanita Tikaram
    Tanita Tikaram is a British pop/folk singer-songwriter, best known for the hits "Twist in My Sobriety" and "Good Tradition" from her 1988 debut album, Ancient Heart...

     covered the song on her 1998 album The Cappuccino Songs
    The Cappuccino Songs
    The Cappuccino Songs is an album by Tanita Tikaram, released in 1998 via Mother Records. The Japanese version of the album contains two extra tracks: "And I Think of You - E penso a te" and "Feeling is Gone"...

    .
  • A dance cover by ABBAcadabra was released by Almighty Records
    Almighty Records
    Almighty Records is a British recording label and remix production team founded in 1989, releasing their first single in the same year. Producing mainly Dance-Pop and Hi-NRG music, the label is best known for releasing remakes and remixes of mainstream pop songs...

     during the late 1990s. An audio sample can be heard on the official Almighty Records page.
  • UK indie band Jacques covered the song for their 2000 album To Stars.
  • Dutch
    Netherlands
    The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

     singer Sarah Fairfield included a cover of the song on her 2004 debut album Green.
  • Steven Wilson
    Steven Wilson
    Steven John Wilson is an English musician, best known as the founder, lead guitarist, singer and songwriter of progressive rock band Porcupine Tree...

     of Porcupine Tree
    Porcupine Tree
    Porcupine Tree is a progressive rock band formed by Steven Wilson in 1987 in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England. Their music is difficult to categorise, being associated with both psychedelic rock and progressive rock, yet having been influenced by trance, krautrock and ambient due to Steven...

     covered the song on the second release of his Cover Version series in 2004.
  • Swedish opera singer Anne Sofie von Otter covered the song on her 2006 ABBA tribute album I Let The Music Speak
  • British Antique-Beat band The Real Tuesday Weld
    The Real Tuesday Weld
    The Real Tuesday Weld are a British band, fronted by lead singer and founder Stephen Coates. They are known for producing jazzy cabaret-style music with subtle electronica influences, a style dubbed "antique beat" by Coates. They have six albums, several singles and eps and many tracks on...

     covered the song on the 2007 compilation album Backspin: A 6 Degrees 10 Year Anniversary Project.
  • Steve Hogarth
    Steve Hogarth
    Steve Hogarth also known as "h", is the lead vocalist and occasional keyboardist/guitarist with the British rock band Marillion. Hogarth was formerly a keyboard player and co-lead vocalist with The Europeans and vocalist with How We Live...

     (lead singer of Marillion
    Marillion
    Marillion are a British rock band, formed in Aylesbury, England in 1979. Their recorded studio output comprises sixteen albums generally regarded in two distinct eras, delineated by the departure of original vocalist & frontman Fish in late 1988, and the subsequent arrival of replacement Steve...

    ) performed the song in his 2010/2011 solo h natural concerts.
  • In 1983 Dutch singer Andre Hazes
    André Hazes
    André Gerardus Hazes was a Dutch singer in a genre called levenslied which is a form of emotional folk music about everyday life sung in the Dutch language. André Hazes was one of the most successful singers in this genre...

    released a christmas-version of this song, with new, dutch lyrics. It's called Met kerst ben ik alleen.
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