The Winner Takes It All by ABBA

The Winner Takes It All is a 1980 ballad by ABBA, written by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson and sung by Agnetha Fältskog. Polar Music released it on July 21, 1980, as the lead single from the album Super Trouper. It went to number one in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and South Africa. It reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States.

The song started in the summer of 1979, when Ulvaeus and Andersson were working in a cottage on Viggsö, a small island in the Stockholm archipelago. Andersson later said the idea came quickly, pieced together from bits of music the two had kept from earlier sessions. They wrote with only a piano, a guitar and hummed sounds standing in for words. The melody rests on two lines that repeat through the whole song. The early demo went by the name The Story of My Life.

The band took it into Polar Music Studios in Stockholm on June 2, 1980. The first backing track was fast, with a steady beat and handclaps. Andersson called that version stiff and metrical. The group put that version aside. They recorded a new backing track four days later. Andersson had found a descending piano figure, heard in the intro and returning throughout. He moved the arrangement toward the feel of a French chanson. The tempo loosened. The structure opened up around the vocal.

The session players on the June 6 backing track were the same ones ABBA relied on for much of its catalog: Lasse Wellander on electric guitar, Mike Watson on bass and Ola Brunkert on drums, with Andersson on piano. Åke Sundqvist joined on percussion for that second attempt. Rutger Gunnarsson wrote the string arrangement. The strings were recorded on June 16. Michael B. Tretow engineered the sessions. The final mix was done on June 18.

Ulvaeus first sang a guide vocal in made-up French. For a while he was considered as the lead singer. He then took the tape home to write real lyrics. He has said he had a couple of large glasses of whisky that night. He finished the whole text in about an hour and barely changed a word afterward. He later said it was a good thing he did not end up singing it himself. The part went to Fältskog. She recalled being moved when she first read the words.

The lyric is a conversation between two former partners, told from the side of the one who was left. Ulvaeus and Fältskog had separated about 18 months before the sessions. Their divorce was made final in 1980. Ulvaeus has always held that the story is fiction. He has also said the pain of the breakup shaped it. In his view, neither he nor Fältskog came out of the divorce as a winner. Fältskog described the words as deeply personal and the music as unsurpassed. She said it took her a long time to realize the band had made a small masterpiece.

Lasse Hallström, who directed many of ABBA's promotional films, shot the video on July 12, 1980, in Marstrand, an island town on the west coast of Sweden. The shoot took place about ten days after the court declared the divorce official. The clip opens with a montage of black and white photos. It follows Fältskog walking alone, cut against shots of the other members looking far happier. Ulvaeus said the group saw it as an important song. They wanted to be sure it did not get lost.

The single became ABBA's eighth number one in the UK and made the top five in Austria, Finland, France, West Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. In America it spent 26 weeks on the Hot 100, longer than any other ABBA single. It was the group's last top ten hit there. It also topped the US Adult Contemporary chart, the band's second number one on that list after Fernando. It finished 23rd on the Billboard year end chart for 1981. In Brazil it was the main theme of the 1980 soap opera Coração Alado. It is certified double platinum in the UK. It had passed 920,000 combined UK sales and streams by 2021.

The song is in G flat major. It runs just under five minutes on the album. Song IQ lists the key and BPM for The Winner Takes It All.

British audiences have kept naming it their favorite. A 1999 Channel 5 poll voted it the country's favorite ABBA song. An ITV poll in 2010 gave the same result. A 2006 Channel 5 poll named it Britain's favorite breakup song. Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone placed it eighth in his ranking of ABBA songs. Classic Pop put it ninth among the band's best work.

The song has also appeared on stage and screen. Producer Judy Craymer has said its emotional pull set her on the path to Mamma Mia!, the stage musical built from ABBA songs. It became a showstopper in that show. In the 2008 film version, Meryl Streep sings it as Donna to Pierce Brosnan's Sam shortly before her daughter's wedding. Better Call Saul used it in its fourth season finale, Winner, as a karaoke duet for brothers Jimmy and Chuck McGill, played by Bob Odenkirk and Michael McKean.

Other singers have recorded it too. Mireille Mathieu released a French version, Bravo, tu as gagné, in 1981, with Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Ulvaeus and Andersson singing backup. Susan Boyle included it on her 2012 album Standing Ovation. Kylie and Dannii Minogue recorded it with the BBC Concert Orchestra for the Beautiful People soundtrack. Cher put it on Dancing Queen, her 2018 album of ABBA songs. That album grew out of her role in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.