Every so often, the British Broadcasting Corporation will open up the Radio 2 Piano Room at Maida Vale Studios, and artists will head in there and record sessions with the BBC Radio Orchestra. Typically, those artists will play a couple of their own songs and then throw in a cover. We’re about to get a bunch of new Maida Vale sessions from the BBC, and the first of them is from the beloved Britpop institution Pulp, a band that really knows how to use an orchestra.
In 2025, Pulp returned with the dumbfoundingly excellent More, their first new album in 24 years. After that, they shared their cover of Johnny Cash’s “The Man Comes Around,” and they’ve got a song on the upcoming benefit compilation HELP(2). (Their contribution “Begging For Change” may or may not be a Billy Bragg cover.) In their brand new Maida Vale session, Pulp bust out a version of an ABBA song that they’ve never performed before.
ABBA released “The Day Before You Came” in 1982, when the group was on the verge of breaking up. The song takes some musical cues from the synthpop of its moment, and it’s essentially a kitchen-sink drama — a catalog of all the inconsequential things that someone might do while killing time before a romantic encounter. In other words, it was practically a Pulp song all along. In their version, Pulp finally take full possession. Check out their cover and ABBA’s original video below.
Pulp’s Maida Vale session also includes very cool orchestral versions of the epic More track “Hymn Of The North” and of their 1995 classic “Something Changed,” and you can watch those below.
