The Winner Takes It All

Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson began writing "The Winner Takes It All" in the summer of 1979, in a cottage on the Swedish island of Viggsö. The idea came suddenly, Andersson said, from old small musical pieces they had lying around. The demo carried the working title "The Story of My Life", and the first arrangement was uptempo with a constant beat. The pair felt it was much too stiff and metrical, so they set the song aside for four days while working on other material.

When they returned, Andersson proposed a French chanson-style arrangement built on a descending piano line and a looser structure. Ulvaeus recorded a demo using nonsense French words in place of lyrics, then took the recording home to write the real words for ABBA. He drank whiskey while writing and later called it the quickest lyric he ever produced, saying the whole text came to him in a rush of emotion within an hour. When he handed the lyric to Agnetha Fältskog, who sang lead on the finished recording, a tear or two welled up in her eyes.

Released on 21 July 1980 as the lead single from the album Super Trouper, the song topped the charts in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands. Ulvaeus denied it was about his own divorce from Fältskog, insisting the words were fiction, though he admitted the heartache of the break-up informed the writing. Neither of them, he said, had been the winner in their divorce.