ABBA – The Winner Takes It All

Björn Ulvaeus Sang the Demo in Nonsense French — and Then Had to Ask His Newly Divorced Wife to Sing It for Real

The song that would become “The Winner Takes It All” arrived at Polar Music Studios in Stockholm on June 2, 1980, under a working title that told you everything: “The Story of My Life.” Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson had written it with just two melody lines — two phrases that repeat throughout the entire song, going round and round with a counterpoint descending theme beneath them. Benny later described it to The Sunday Times as the simplest song, one with only these two phrases. He played the descending phrase — the one that opens the recording and runs beneath the chorus — and said that deceptive simplicity was part of its strength. When they brought it to the studio, the final lyric hadn’t been written. Björn sang a demo vocal in nonsense French, following a chanson feeling that the melody was suggesting to him, while the arrangement was being worked out. There were serious suggestions that he should be the featured vocalist on the finished recording. He considered it. He later said it was a good thing he didn’t. This was clearly a song for one of the women. Before he could hand it over, he had to go home, listen to the cassette of the backing track over and over, and find out what the music was trying to say to him. When he did, the lyric he wrote was about the experience of a divorce. He has maintained for decades that it is fiction — ninety percent, he has said — and that there was no winner or loser in his and Agnetha Fältskog’s actual separation. Fältskog herself has said the same. What he has never denied is that the song is about divorce, the emotions it produces, and the specific desolation of the one who doesn’t want it to end.

Agnetha Fältskog, the woman who would sing that lyric, had divorced Björn Ulvaeus in 1979. By the time she came into the studio to record her vocal, they were no longer married and had been separated for a year. Björn has spoken about bringing the finished song to the studio: everyone said, this is great, wonderful. And then it was strange, hearing her singing it. She sang it like an actress doing something, he said — and there were a few tears afterwards. Agnetha has described the experience differently: she said it was like acting a part, that she couldn’t let her feelings take over, that she had to maintain the separation between the emotion of the performance and the emotion of her own situation. She has also said that it was quite a while afterwards before she realised they had made a small masterpiece. The recording was completed and mixed on June 18, 1980. On July 12 — ten days after a Swedish court had officially declared the divorce between Björn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Fältskog legally final — the group reassembled on the island of Marstrand on Sweden’s west coast to film the promotional video.

What Lasse Hallström Understood

The video was directed by Lasse Hallström, who had been ABBA’s primary video collaborator throughout their career and understood the specific visual grammar they had developed. He made a deliberate choice with “The Winner Takes It All”: the video focuses almost exclusively on Agnetha, standing alone in the summer light of Marstrand, singing a lyric written by her ex-husband that places her as the abandoned woman in a failed relationship. The other members of the band appear, but it is Agnetha’s face and Agnetha’s performance that carry the footage — a face that by this point had become one of the most recognisable in European pop music, here being asked to carry an emotional weight that the audience was fully aware of even if the artists maintained its fictional status. Hallström’s description of what he was doing was precise: he wanted to visualise the message that “this is what has become of the group that used to consist of two happy couples — the illusion has been shattered.” The location itself contributed. Marstrand is a small island community with a particular quality of Nordic summer light — pale, warm, slightly melancholy — that the footage absorbed and gave back to the song.

Released on July 21, 1980, “The Winner Takes It All” reached number one in the United Kingdom — ABBA’s eighth UK chart-topper — as well as in Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, and South Africa. In the United States it peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100, spending 26 weeks on the chart — more weeks than any other ABBA single in American chart history — and becoming their fourth and final American top ten hit. It also reached number one on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, their second AC chart-topper after “Fernando.” In the UK, as of 2021, it had accumulated 920,000 chart sales including streaming, making it the group’s fifth-biggest song in the country by that measure. Two separate polls conducted for Channel 5 and ITV named it Britain’s favourite ABBA song. A 2006 Channel Five poll named it Britain’s Favourite Break-Up Song. Benny Andersson produced the backing track with keyboards, synthesizers, and an arrangement of strings by Rutger Gunnarsson. Ola Brunkert played drums, Lasse Wellander guitar, Mike Watson bass, and Åke Sundqvist percussion.

The Life the Song Has Led

The song was included in the stage musical Mamma Mia! and in the 2008 film adaptation, where it was performed by Meryl Streep. Björn Ulvaeus said: “Meryl Streep is a goddess. I was completely taken by surprise when I saw her performance in the movie. To hear her delivering the songs with all the emotion we put in the lyrics is more than we could have dreamed of.” A German version titled “Nur Sieger steh’n im Licht” was recorded by Marianne Rosenberg in 1980. A French version titled “Bravo tu as gagné” was re-recorded by Andersson and Ulvaeus with Mireille Mathieu at the end of that year. The Shadows recorded an instrumental version in 1981. Beverley Craven released her own version as a single in 1993. The song’s second life in the streaming era has added hundreds of millions of additional plays across platforms, continuing to introduce it to listeners who were not born when Agnetha stood on a Swedish island in the summer of 1980 and sang something she had to pretend wasn’t hers.

Agnetha has called it her favourite from the ABBA years. The lyrics are deeply personal, she has said, and the music is unsurpassed. Singing it was like acting a part. She couldn’t let her feelings take over. It was quite a while afterwards before she realised they had made a small masterpiece. Given what the song required of her — the specific performance, in the specific place, ten days after the specific legal conclusion of the specific relationship — the restraint in that assessment is itself a kind of achievement.