The Winner Takes It All

"The Winner Takes It All" is a song recorded by the Swedish pop group ABBA. Released as the first single from the group's Super Trouper album on 21 July 1980, it is a ballad in the key of F-sharp major, reflecting the end of a romance. The single's B-side was the non-album track "Elaine".

History

"The Winner Takes It All", original demo title "The Story of My Life", was written by both Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, with Agnetha Fältskog singing the lead vocal. The lyrics to the song were thought to mirror the divorce between Ulvaeus and Fältskog in 1979, similar to the 1981 song "When All Is Said and Done", in which Ulvaeus deals with the divorce between Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson in 1981.

Ulvaeus denies the song is about his and Fältskog's divorce, saying the basis of the song "is the experience of a divorce, but it's fiction. There wasn't a winner or a loser in our case. A lot of people think it's straight out of reality, but it's not". American critic Chuck Klosterman, who says "The Winner Takes It All" is "[the only] pop song that examines the self-aware guilt one feels when talking to a person who has humanely obliterated your heart" finds Ulvaeus' denial hard to believe in light of the original title.

The Corrs

The Corrs are an Irish band that combines rock with traditional Celtic Irish folk themes within their music. The group consists of the Corr siblings, Andrea (lead vocals, tin whistle); Sharon (violin, vocals); Caroline (drums, percussion, piano, bodhrán, vocals) and Jim (guitar, piano, keyboards, vocals). They are from Dundalk, Co. Louth, in Ireland.

The Corrs have released six studio albums and numerous singles, which have reached platinum in many countries.Talk on Corners, their most successful album to date, reached multi-platinum status in Australia and in the UK it was the highest selling album of 1998. The band is one of only a handful of acts who have held the top two positions simultaneously in the UK album charts, with Talk on Corners at number one and Forgiven, Not Forgotten at number two. The latter was the third highest selling album in Australia in 1996, behind Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill and Celine Dion's Falling Into You. Their third studio album, In Blue, went to number one in seventeen countries.