The Day Before You Came
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| "The Day Before You Came" | ||
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| Single by ABBA | ||
| from the album The Singles: The First Ten Years | ||
| Released | 1982 | |
| Format | 7" Single | |
| Genre | Pop/Europop | |
| Length | 5:54 | |
| Writer(s) | Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson |
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| Producer(s) | Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson |
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| Certification | N/A | |
| Chart positions | ||
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| ABBA singles chronology | ||
| "Se Me Está Escapando" (1982) |
"The Day Before You Came" (1982) |
"Under Attack" (1983) |
"The Day Before You Came" is a song recorded and released by the Swedish pop group ABBA. It was originally released as the first "new" song off the November 1982 double compilation album The Singles: The First Ten Years.
[edit] Antecedents
After the lukewarm success of 1981's The Visitors, both Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson took some time off, as usual, to write new material, yet at the same time, they were in the beginning of the creation of their first musical Chess, alongside Sir Tim Rice. Meanwhile, Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad began slowly their English-speaking solo careers. Fältskog recorded with fellow ABBA backing vocalist Tomas Ledin the song "Never Again" (a modest hit in Europe) while Lyngstad searched for Phil Collins to produce her solo album.
The group returned to the Polar Studio in the summer of 1982 to record new songs for a planned follow up album to The Visitors. A few songs were recorded, due to delays from the Chess project as well as the promotion for Lyngstad's album. Throughout the years of ABBA's compilations, only outtakes of those final recording sessions, "I Am the City" and "You Owe Me One" (the B-side to their last single "Under Attack") surfaced commercially in ABBA's revival in the 90's.
[edit] Song history
"The Day Before You Came" was 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 operatic solo vocal line of Lyngstad mixed with the instrumental, the only instruments featured on the song were Benny Andersson's synthesizer and drum machine, Ulvaeus's acoustic guitar and a snare drum by Åke Sundqvist. The song minutely details the story of an ordinary girl's life right before she met her loved one (another interpretation is before she died), blended with a sombre, haunting melody. Though it was the first song off The Singles, this song was the last song the group ever recorded together in the studio.
[edit] Chart success
The single was released officially on October 18, 1982 with another new song "Cassandra" as the B-side. In the charts, after the success of 1981's "One of Us", ABBA experienced a slow decline in UK single sales, which later explained the song's placing at number thirty-two, though it reached the top five in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. It also went to No.5 on RPM magazine Adult Contemporary chart in Canada. The song was promoted by a state-of-the-art music video clip, filmed on September 21 and directed by the team of Kjell Sundvall and Kjell-Åke Andersson, breaking ABBA's eight year directing relationship with Lasse Hallström. The video featured Swedish actor Jonas Bergström as Fältskog's love interest. Two years later, in 1984, the first cover version of the song was released by British synthpop duo Blancmange. The cover charted at number twenty-two in the UK singles chart and was included in that year's Mange Tout album.
