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The Winner Takes It All

"The Winner Takes It All"
Winner Takes It All.jpg
Single by ABBA
from the album Super Trouper
B-side "Elaine"
Released 21 July 1980
Format Single
Genre Pop
Length 4:54
Label Polar Records (Scandinavia, Germany and Benelux) ; RCA Victor (South America, Central America, Caribbean and Oceania) ; Atlantic Records, WEA (North America) ; Epic Records (United Kingdom and Italy) ; Polydor (Other European Countries) ; RCA Victor or WEA or Epic Records or Polydor (Africa and Asia)
Writer(s) Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus
Producer(s) Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus
ABBA singles chronology
"As Good as New"
(1979)
"The Winner Takes It All"
(1980)
"On and On and On"
(1980)
Super Trouper track listing
Side one
  1. "Super Trouper"
  2. "The Winner Takes It All"
  3. "On and On and On"
  4. "Andante, Andante"
  5. "Me and I"
Side two
  1. "Happy New Year"
  2. "Our Last Summer"
  3. "The Piper"
  4. "Lay All Your Love on Me"
  5. "The Way Old Friends Do"
Music video
"The Winner Takes It All " on YouTube

"The Winner Takes It All" is a song recorded by the Swedish pop group ABBA. Released as the first single from the group's Super Trouper album on 21 July 1980, it is a ballad in the key of F-sharp major, reflecting the end of a romance. The single's B-side was the non-album track "Elaine".

"The Winner Takes It All", original demo title "The Story of My Life", was written by both Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, with Agnetha Fältskog singing the lead vocal.

Ulvaeus denies the song is about his and Fältskog's divorce, saying the basis of the song "is the experience of a divorce, but it's fiction. There wasn't a winner or a loser in our case. A lot of people think it's straight out of reality, but it's not". American critic Chuck Klosterman, who says "The Winner Takes It All" is "[the only] pop song that examines the self-aware guilt one feels when talking to a person who has humanely obliterated your heart" finds Ulvaeus' denial hard to believe in light of the original title.

Fältskog has also repeatedly stated that though "The Winner Takes It All" is her favorite ABBA song and that it has an excellent set of lyrics, the story is not that of her and Ulvaeus: there were no winners in their divorce, especially as children were involved. Ulvaeus also wrote the lyrics for Fältskog's 1979 live number 'I'm Still Alive'.

In a 1999 poll for Channel 5, "The Winner Takes It All" was voted Britain's favourite ABBA song. This feat was replicated in a 2010 poll for ITV. In a 2006 poll for a Channel Five programme, "The Winner Takes It All" was voted "Britain's Favourite Break-Up Song."

A music video to promote the song was filmed in July 1980 on Marstrand, an island on the Swedish west coast. It was directed by Lasse Hallström.


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Wikipedia

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