World of Chig   

29.4.04
Your favourite ABBA Tracks: #2 The Day Before You Came

Despite being a bigger hit for Blancmange than it was for Abba, this turns out to be a song with enduring appeal, narrowly beaten to the top of our poll. After ‘Head Over Heels’ had seen a sharp downturn in ABBA’s fortunes in the UK, making only #25 in February 1982, (only three months after ‘One Of Us’ had reached #3), ‘The Day Before You Came’ was the next single, and could only peak at #32 in its second week , dawdling in the top 40 for only four weeks at 32-35-35-37. Less than two years later, Blancmange’s version, complete with a couple of British tweaks, made a more promising start, vaulting from #39 to #22 in its second week, before mysteriously stalling there for two more weeks. They managed 8 weeks on the chart in total; two more than ABBA’s original. Nevertheless, the fab four’s version seems to have stood the test of time, probably because it is such an unusual song. Eschewing the normal verse-chorus-verse structure, it just tells a story, detailing the minutiae of one particular, routine day, with a musical backing that would be identifiable as ABBA even without the lead vocal. It’s a bit like Squeeze’s ‘Up The Junction’, in that it doesn’t repeat any lines, except that the title does get a repeated airing in ABBA’s song. It reads like a poem. I never get tired of hearing it, and a lot of you clearly feel the same. It's now available as a bonus track on the repacked version of 'The Visitors'. Tomorrow, the winner. Can you guess?

· link

Home