“The Winner Takes It All” is a pop ballad written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus and recorded by ABBA in 1980. Released on 21 July 1980 as the lead single from the album Super Trouper, it features Agnetha Fältskog on lead vocals. Its lyric concerns the end of a relationship and the experience of divorce, though Ulvaeus described it as fictional rather than a literal account of his divorce from Fältskog.
Written in the summer of 1979, the song began as an uptempo demo titled “The Story of My Life.” Andersson reshaped it into a looser, French chanson-influenced arrangement, built around a descending piano line. The finished recording is a ballad in G-flat major, with piano, strings, electric guitar, bass, drums and tambourine supporting Fältskog’s dramatic vocal. It reached number one in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands, and peaked at number 8 on the US Billboard Hot 100. Cher recorded it for her 2018 album Dancing Queen, while Susan Boyle included it on 2012’s Standing Ovation: The Greatest Songs from the Stage.
