This is one of my favorite ABBA songs and was recorded as the first new song from their double compilation album, The Singles: The First Ten Years.
The song was recorded with the working title of “The Suffering Bird” featuring lead vocals by Agnetha Fältskog and was the last song that ABBA ever recorded together. According to Michael Tretow, ABBA’s long-time sound engineer, Fältskog sang her lead without the lights on. He added that the mood in the studio was sad and everybody knew that it was the end.
The song details the story of a woman’s mundane life right before she met her lover. What happened after the guy “came” remains a mystery in a similar vein to the identity of the subject of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain.”
When The London Times March 26, 2010 asked Ulvaeus about it, he smiled enigmatically and replied. “You’ve spotted it, haven’t you? The music is hinting at it. You can tell in that song that we were straining towards musical theatre. We got Agnetha to act the part of the person in that song.
The lyric, “I must have read a while, the latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style,” is a reference to American feminist author Marilyn French (1929-2009), whose 1977 novel The Women’s Room is cited as one of the most influential novels of the modern feminist movement.
I must have left my house at eight, because I always do
My train, I’m certain, left the station just when it was due
I must have read the morning paper going into town
And having gotten through the editorial, no doubt I must have frowned
I must have made my desk around a quarter after nine
With letters to be read, and heaps of papers waiting to be signed
I must have gone to lunch at half past twelve or so
The usual place, the usual bunch
And still on top of this I’m pretty sure it must have rained
The day before you came
I must have lit my seventh cigarette at half past two
And at the time I never even noticed I was blue
I must have kept on dragging through the business of the day
Without really knowing anything, I hid a part of me away
At five I must have left, there’s no exception to the rule
A matter of routine, I’ve done it ever since I finished school
The train back home again
Undoubtedly I must have read the evening paper then
Oh yes, I’m sure my life was well within its usual frame
The day before you came
I must have opened my front door at eight o’clock or so
And stopped along the way to buy some Chinese food to go
I’m sure I had my dinner watching something on TV
There’s not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn’t see
I must have gone to bed around a quarter after ten
I need a lot of sleep, and so I like to be in bed by then
I must have read a while
The latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style
It’s funny, but I had no sense of living without aim
The day before you came
And turning out the light I must have yawned and cuddled up for yet another night
And rattling on the roof I must have heard the sound of rain
The day before you came
