The Intro

It had been nearly two years since ABBA had last topped the charts, with the upbeat bounce of Take a Chance on Me. You won’t find any of that in The Winner Takes It All. One of the saddest number 1s you’ll ever hear details the break-up of a relationship – and you don’t have to look far to find the inspiration.

Before

ABBA: The Album had cemented the group’s status as one of the biggest and best in the world back in 1978. They converted a disused cinema in their hometown of Stockholm into Polar Music Studio, which would be used by huge acts including Led Zeppelin and Genesis. They also paid tribute to Stockholm with their next single, but Summer Night City proved problematic to record. It would peak at five in the UK. Nonetheless, it would signpost that ABBA’s next LP, Voulez-Vous, would be a further move into disco.

Not that you’d know that from their next single. The ballad Chiquitita was premiered at the Music for UNICEF charity concert on 9 January 1979, and released in the UK. Although the song gained the highest initial position of any ABBA single (eight), it couldn’t quite hit the top spot, finishing up at two behind Heart of Glass. But it remains one of the most famous charity singles ever.

While Chiquitita was charting, Björn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Fältskog announced they were getting divorced. Understandably, the media and fans wondered if this meant the end of ABBA, but everyone was reassured they would continue. In fact, it was hoped that now the news was out, they could get back to recording their troubled sixth album. Songwriters Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson decamped to an apartment in the Bahamas and they concentrated on listening to the latest sounds emanating from the US, which were mainly disco.

Voulez-Vous was released that April, with the next single, Does Your Mother Know, standing out due to Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad uncharacteristically being relegated to backing vocals. It stalled at four. The title track came next, billed as a double A-side with Angeleyes. Surprisingly, despite the former being one of their most famous and catchiest tunes, couldn’t get higher than three. When the similarly impressive Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) peaked at the same position (released to coincide with their second greatest hits compilation), it may have started to look like perhaps ABBA’s number 1 days were over. Which would have been OK – after all, they had notched up seven, which was more than anyone achieved in the 70s. Their last single that decade, the cheesy I Have a Dream, couldn’t get higher than two.

Following an enormously successful tour, including six sold-out nights at Wembley Arena, ABBA reconvened in Feb 1980 to start work on their seventh album. Perhaps due to the disco backlash in the US, and the looming divorce, they reverted to a more pop sound, with added mature lyrics that had been hinted at with songs like Knowing Me, Knowing You. Only this time, The Winner Takes It All mirrored Ulvaeus and Fältskog’s personal experiences at least, to a degree.

Ulvaeus and Andersson had written the first released fruits of Super Trouper in the summer of 1979 in a cottage on the island of Viggsö. Originally called The Story of My Life (a title that scans well with the chorus), The Winner Takes It All started out more uptempo. However, they found the demo too stiff, and when they returned to the song four days later, Andersson had come up with a looser structure and a suitably sadder arrangement thanks to the descending piano line. Impressed, Ulvaeus recorded a new demo and garbled nonsense-French lyrics over the tune (due to its new chanson feel). He then took the recording home and got drunk on whiskey. He later claimed the words to The Winner Takes It All were the quickest he ever wrote, coming to him in a blast of emotion within the hour.

Ulvaeus has claimed more than once that The Winner Takes It All shouldn’t be taken as a literal recount of his divorce, pointing out that there was no winner or loser in their experience. But he didn’t deny that his sadness over their marriage breakdown had inspired the song to an extent. To quote Knowing Me, Knowing You, ‘Breaking up is never easy’. And it certainly hit home for Fältskog, who shed tears when presented with the lyrics.

Review

The sadness in The Winner Takes It All is so real, it can actually be unbearable if it gets you at a bad time. Compare it with What’s Another Year – workmanlike maudlin misery with no sense of authenticity. Ulvaeus’ lyrics are painfully honest – I believe him when he says they’re not directly inspired by what he went through, but good God, there’s no wonder they hit a nerve with poor Fältskog. Those first three lines:

‘I don’t wanna talk,
About things we’ve gone through,
Though it’s hurting me, now it’s history’.

Ouch. Likely a fair summation of the mood in Polar Studios, post-divorce, between the former couple. From there, I’m not sure of the levels of fiction involved, but the title of the song and the comparison with a card game suggests some other woman has won her man, or perhaps it’s even about who got what in a court battle. ‘That’s her destiny’ suggests the former, while the references to judges later suggests the latter, so maybe it’s both.

The second verse talks of the spurned partner’s mistaken sense of security and hopes for the future, but that they now feel they were a fool to play ‘by the rules’. By verse three, she very much does want to talk. She’s angry and is asking those internal questions the mind asks even when the heart is too scared to find out the answer. She wants to know how her ex’s new love compares to her. By the time she gets to her confession she misses him, but is resigned to playing by the rules of the game. She’s lost.

The final verse, now that’s the hardest part to bear. An apologetic Fältskog feels sorry for making her ex feel sad about how things turned out, and although she’s trying to come to terms with their more formal future (‘And I understand, you’ve come to shake my hand’), it’s too hard. She’s ‘tense, no self-confidence’, but what does she do? She apologises, because she cares still. It’s heart-wrenching.

As someone who’s only really getting to grips with how great ABBA were, I must admit that previously, I didn’t really care for The Winner Takes It All particularly. Musically, I saw it as another example of ABBA’s high camp and melodramatic tendencies. I knew it was connected to marital woes, but it’s taken middle age and, more importantly, my own divorce to understand just how very real and painful this song is. ABBA were coming to the end of the road, but they approached it with grace and honesty. And I was wrong about the tune too, because it’s actually pretty funky when you really listen – courtesy of the session rhythm section, Ola Brunkert on drums and Mike Watson on bass.

Ulvaeus’ lyrics are thoughtful, but the same can’t be said for whoever signed off on the video. As usual, their director Lasse Hallström took a very literal approach, and really blurred the lines of truth and fiction. Following black and white images of ABBA in happier times, we cut to a dejected and pained Fältskog in close-up, singing inbetween footage of the rest of the band having a laugh. Her face at the end is almost too much to bear when you consider the video was shot only 10 days after the divorce was officially declared.

After

The Winner Takes It All was a worldwide hit, becoming number 1 in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and South Africa. It also performed well in Austria, France, West Germany and Sweden, and became their final US hit. The signs were very good for the parent album, Super Trouper.

The Outro

Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan’s rendition of ABBA’s penultimate number 1 from their series The Trip is well worth a watch if you’d rather not get too caught up in the inherent misery of the song.

The Info

Writers & producers

Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus

Weeks at number 1

2 (9-22 August)

Trivia

Births

19 August: Actor Adam Campbell/Singer Darius Danesh

Deaths

9 August: Comedian Audrey Jeans
10 August: Philosopher Gareth Evans
18 August: Rower Harold Kitching
20 August: Historian AK Hamilton Jenkin/Historian Dame Lucy Sutherland
21 August: Actor Norman Shelley

Meanwhile…

11 August: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visits Harold Hill in East London to hand over the keys to the 12,000th council tenants to buy their home under the right to buy scheme. When she does so, she’s booed by neighbours of the family in East London.
Also that day, Tyne and Wear Metro opens on Tyneside.

16 August: The Denmark Place fire kills 37 people of eight nationalities, after an arson attack. Petty criminal John Thompson was thrown out of The Spanish Place – one of two unlicensed bars on the top two floors of 18 Denmark Place (Rodo’s was the other). He found a container, hailed a taxi to a petrol station, filled it with petrol, poured it through the letterbox of the venue, and threw a lit piece of paper inside. The fire swept through the building so quickly, many inside died on the spot.

20 August: 47-year-old Marguerite Walls became Peter Sutcliffe’s 12th known victim, strangled to death on her way home from work in Leeds.