ABBA revisit heartbreaking story behind hit song ‘Winner Takes It All’
ABBA, the hit Swedish band from the 1970s, shared the heartbreaking story behind one of their greatest hits, Winner Takes It All.
Group members included Agnetha Fältskog, Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid Lyngstad.
The breakup song was featured on their wildly successful Super Trouper album in 1980.
“One thing we learned was that everything starts with a song,” Björn Ulvaeus, 79, said in the documentary ABBA: AGAINST THE ODDS.
“I think great music is created from the human experience. Deep emotions. Writing a lyric is something in between a poem and a melody. It would conjure up not only a mood — but images sometimes in me.”
Ulvaeus presented the band with the lyrics for the song which they all connected with instantly.
“I’m a very much feeling person and I really tried to put my life experience and my feelings, everything, in this song,” Fältskog, 74, said.
Ulvaeus added, “Going through divorce is difficult as anyone would know who’s done it. That was of course taking up my thoughts. But there was not one winner in the case of us.”
At the time, Ulvaeus had recently gone through a divorce with Agnetha Fältskog — with whom he welcomed daughter Linda Elin, now 51, and son Peter Christian, now 47 — after seven years of marriage.
Moreover, the year in which the album was released, the marriage of group Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson began to crumble and they decided to part ways.
The band parted ways in 1982.
