(Credits: Far Out / Raph_PH / Abba)
Tue 17 March 2026 6:00, UK
The great thing about being a Pulp fan is that you have music for nearly every occasion.
Should you want something a little more heartfelt or tender, there is the 1995 track ‘Something Changed’, while ‘Disco 2000’ provides the ultimate anthem for days when sincerity is stripped away, and the appetite for a party becomes insatiable.
They are the band for all times in your life, and so removes you from the shameful pit of exposing your guilty pleasures. But that doesn’t mean the band’s frontman, Jarvis Cocker, has to feel the same.
No, it would be inherently odd for him to feel the very same way about his music as the most die-hard Pulp fans, and so, understandably, when he is in need of an emotional injection, he has to look elsewhere. But exactly where it is he looks for it comes as something of a surprise, given Cocker represents the very best of the alternative and authentic.
“I discovered ABBA, really, obviously everybody knew because they were in the charts, but my sister was really into them, and she had ABBA, Arrival,” he explained, somewhat dismissively, as his fans would expect. But then, Cocker’s tone changed.
He added, “The way I realised they did a thing for me was I was doing an interview, a little bit like this, and they were talking about mainstream artists, I had a choice between The Carpenters and ABBA to talk about, so I decided to talk about ABBA, and as I was talking about ABBA, I started feeling like I was going to start crying, and then I went and played ‘The Day Before You Came’ when I got home and absolutely cried my eyes out.”
But it wasn’t just some emotional fluke, inspired by a dodgy hangover, no, it happened all over again for Cocker. “Then I was DJing about a couple of weeks later, and the guy who I was DJing with put it on and thought, Jesus, you’re going to start crying in front of all these people. So I was ready to kind of duck below the DJ desk to preserve my dignity, but it didn’t happen. The state that you’re in has an effect on how the music will do things to you. So it’s a long way of saying that because this song does have an effect on me, I don’t always cry. And I didn’t cry when we performed it, even though I did have some tissues just in case.”
Naturally, Cocker decided that the band should cover the song that seemed to put a lump in his throat, and in doing so, he bridged the gap many of us would perceive exists between Pulp and ABBA.
The almost Bond-esque performance of the ballad is packed with the sort of emotion that Cocker first felt when listening to the song. To honour his own experience of the song, Pulp drenched their rendition in an orchestral arrangement that amplified the sentimentality of the cover and ultimately proved to indie fans all over that if ABBA warranted Cocker’s tears, they should ours too.