Abba's second to last ever single released back in 1982, and said to be the last song they recorded. I've always found this a compellingly beautiful song, grey and repetitive on the one hand, with an undercurrent of the life-changing events that are about to take place for the singer gently lifting the song towards some joyous crescendo.
And here's a 2007 article from The Guardian Music Blog about "The Day Before You Came"
Abba made Joy Division sound like
Jive Bunny
Recorded 25 years ago today, the Swedish outfit's last and finest song showed the uncrowned kings of sad at their wrist-slitting best.
Fighting back the tears ... Abba in Brighton for Eurovision, 1974 ... Photograph: PA
What a way to go. On August 20 1982, Abba went into Polar Studios and recorded their last ever song; The Day Before You Came - the most perfect pop record by the most perfect pop group. Groundhog Day without the laughs, The Day Before You Came detailed the miserable minutiae of all our lives: sleep, commute, work, eat, work, commute, telly, eat, sleep. Oh, and then I met you, and suddenly my pointless life had some meaning. Wow!
But that was ever Abba. Although idiots the world over love them as the sound of fun, fun, fun, hardcore Abbaholics have always heard something else in their music. The far fabber four were Sweden's uncrowned kings of sad. Abba's last album, The Visitors, was so unbelievably bleak it made Joy Division sound like Jive Bunny.
The Day Before You Came was Abba at their wrist-slitting best. It also sounds like a band that's already split. All you hear is Benny's synths and Agnetha not singing, just saying - Bjorn had told her to sound bored. She did - in plaintive spades. But Frida is on there too, doing that ethereal "Ahh....". Carl Magnus Palm, author of Abba: The Complete Recording Sessions, assures me he's pretty sure Bjorn is strumming away on acoustic guitar somewhere, but it's mixed down to nothing. Always great recyclers of their own material, the Ber-der-ber synth riff is on loan from Should I Laugh Or Cry. The working title for the song was Den Lidande Fageln. Which translates as Suffering Bird. Carl Magnus Palm says this doesn't sound as hilariously sexist in Swedish.
And how did Great Britain respond to Abba giving them the gift of their greatest song? It climbed to the giddy height of number 32. Never has the record buying public rewarded an act's best track so tattily since Pet Shop Boys' Being Boring wiped out at number 20.
The Day Before You Came was Abba's last ever recording. Benny and Bjorn returned to the studio to mix Under Attack - released as their last single, thus ensuring Abba's career ended with a whimper. Their last appearance as Abba was tragically, though perhaps fittingly, on Noel Edmond's Late Late Breakfast Show.
Abba never actually split up. They just took some time out, so Benny and Bjorn could work on their ever baffling - but brilliant - Cold War musical,Chess, and Agnetha and Frida could produce and promote their solo albums. (Find Frida's second album and hear Slowly - a great lost Abba track, that shows how life with someone can be every bit as painful as life without...)
I've always thought that Benny and Bjorn gave up the Abba ghost when they listened to The Day Before You Came and realised that they could not make a more beautiful record.
No one ever has. Fact!
Now I have no way of knowing if this is true or not, but someone once told me that The Divine Comedy's "Commuter Love" from their album Fin De Siecle was written as a response to "The Day Before You Came". I choose to believe this is true (and the lyrics would suggest I'm quite right to do so).
And finally here is the other Abba song mentioned in the Guardian article - "Should I Laugh Or Cry". Originally the B-side of "The Winner Takes It All" this is a seldom heard gem.
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