ABBA – The Day Before You Came

“The Day Before You Came” – Single by ABBA from the album The Singles: The First Ten Years
B-side “Cassandra”
Released 18 October 1982
Songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus
Producers Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus
Charted No.1 in Finland; No.3 in Sweden; No.3 in Belgium; No.5 in Canada; No.12 in Ireland; No.5 on West Germany; No.32 in UK.

The song was promoted by a music video clip filmed on 21 September 1982, and produced by the team of director Kjell Sundvall and cinematographer Kjell-Åke Andersson, breaking ABBA’s eight-year directing relationship with Lasse Hallström. The change in direction had been prompted by Polar Music and its affiliates, who believed Hallström’s “sometimes unglamorous, almost documentary-style aesthetics” were out of step with the “spectacular, American-type, glossy video” becoming increasingly popular via MTV, and had decided a fresh focus was necessary. Sundvall and Andersson, regarded as an up-and-coming filmmaker team, were recruited by Björn to replace Hallström on the advice of his wife Lena Källersjö, who had worked with them on another project.

The video featured scenes filmed on location in and around Stockholm, showing Agnetha flirting with and developing a romantic relationship with a stranger on a train, played by Swedish actor Jonas Bergström, best known for his role in Jerry Lewis’s unfinished and unreleased 1972 movie The Day the Clown Cried.
The video included shots of the Årstabron bridge, located in the southern part of Stockholm. These shots were difficult for Sundvall and Andersson to capture, and almost resulted in tragedy: “There is a kind of cool helicopter shot when the train passes over the Årstabron bridge, but when we filmed it I almost fell out,” Andersson later claimed.

Within the context of the music video, the train on the bridge actually goes in the wrong direction. In the clip, Agnetha waits at Tumba station for the train and ends up in the city. However, in reality the train seen on the bridge goes from the city to Tumba.

The parts of the video featuring all the members of ABBA were filmed at the China Theatre in Berzelii Park, Stockholm, near the Polar Music offices. There were several photo sessions done during filming at the theatre. One of them, known as “the green session”, was taken in the theatre’s foyer. Overall, the video shoot went well – Kjell-Åke Andersson reported Agnetha was “incredibly easy to work with” – but Sundvall would later recall a strange atmosphere: “It didn’t really feel like we had been working with a group, but with four individuals.”

Christopher Patrick, in ABBA: Let the Music Speak, says the final sequence in the music video, in which “the train [where the narrator meets her lover] shunts off into oblivion, leaving in its wake a bleak and deserted railway station”, is a fitting metaphor for ABBA, having reached the end of their creative partnership.

ABBA
Agnetha Fältskog – lead vocals
Anni-Frid Lyngstad – backing vocals
Björn Ulvaeus – guitar
Benny Andersson – keyboards, synthesizer
with:
Åke Sundqvist – snare drums