The Day Before You Came
| The Day Before You Came | |
|---|---|
| ABBA | |
| publication | October 8, 1982 |
| length | 5:50 |
| Genre (s) | pop music |
| Author (s) | Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus |
| album | The Singles - The First 10 Years |
| Cover version | |
| 1984 | Blancmange |
|
Chart positions Explanation of the data |
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The Day Before You Came is a song by the Swedish pop group ABBA . It was written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus and sung by Agnetha Fältskog . In October 1982 the piece was published with the B-side Cassandra . The song is about a woman whose encounter with a man changes her life forever; now she thinks about the things she did the day before.
Origin and admission
The Day Before You Came was originally supposed to appear on the band's ninth album. The recordings for this began in spring 1982, but were not continued because the band was in the process of disbanding. Instead, it was decided to release the new recordings as singles and on the album The Singles - The First 10 Years . The songs You Owe Me One , I Am the City and Just Like That , recorded in the spring, were happier again in contrast to the pieces on the album The Visitors , as were the songs Cassandra and Under Attack , recorded in early August . It was only with The Day Before You Came that the dark style of The Visitors was continued.
The song was recorded on August 20, 1982 under the working title Den Lidande Fågeln . It was the only song that didn't use real drums, but a drum machine . Björn Ulvaeus played acoustic guitar, but it was hardly audible. During the instrument pauses, Anni-Frid Lyngstad made operatic interjections. Åke Sundquist also contributed the snare drum .
Video
The music video consists of various scenes in which the encounter, flirting and making contact between a woman (Agnetha Fältskog) and a man are shown. Among other things, it shows the crossing over the eastern Årstabrücke (the western one did not exist at that time) near Stockholm and the train station in Tumba .
Hit parade placements
Andersson and Ulvaeus had hoped to position themselves well in the British charts with this single. However, the song did not even make it into the top 30. In other European countries such as Germany, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, however, it made it into the top five, in Finland it came in first.
Cover versions
- The British group Blancmange released a new recording of the song in 1984, which was more successful than the original in some countries.
- The singer Andrea Wilke sang the German version I was too long alone in 1983 .
- British singer Tanita Tikaram released her version in 1998.
- In 2004, Steven Wilson released a version of the piece as a single.
- In 2006 a version by the Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter was released .
Quotes
“I think the song was completely misunderstood by the public or that it was too early. It was so different from anything we'd done. (Original text: I think it was something that was completely misunderstood by the public or it was too early or something like that. It was so different from anything we've done [...]) "
“[...] It's a very moving piece [...] It was very emotional because it was the last ABBA song we ever did and it felt like it was over now. It is so unbelievably presented by Agnetha. It's a very special track. "
literature
- Carl Magnus Palm: Light and Shadow. ABBA - The real story. Bosworth Musikverlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86543-100-4 (German translation: Helmut Müller).
- Carl Magnus Palm: Abba. Story and songs compact. Bosworth Music, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86543-227-8 ( compact story and songs ), (German translation: Cecilia Senge).