The Winner Takes It All (ABBA) cover

"The Winner Takes It All" is a song recorded by Swedish music group ABBA, released on 21 July 1980 as the lead single from the group's seventh studio album, Super Trouper (1980). Penned by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, it is a ballad in the key of G-flat major featuring Agnetha Fältskog on lead vocals, reflecting on the end of a relationship. Although Ulvaeus has denied the song being about his divorce from Fältskog, he has stated the song is about the experience of a divorce. The single's B-side was the non-album track "Elaine".

In a 1999 poll for Channel 5, "The Winner Takes It All" was voted Britain's favourite ABBA song. This feat was replicated in a 2010 poll for ITV. In a 2006 poll for a Channel Five programme, "The Winner Takes It All" was voted "Britain's Favourite Break-Up Song". The song has been covered by multiple artists, the most notable being Cher and Susan Boyle.

Ulvaeus and Andersson started writing "The Winner Takes It All" in the summer of 1979 in a cottage on the island of Viggsö. According to Andersson, the idea for the song suddenly came up "from old ideas, from old small musical pieces" they had. The demo had an original title of "The Story of My Life" and the first arrangement for the song was uptempo with a constant beat. However, they felt their first effort "much too stiff and metrical", so they left the song for a few days while they worked on other songs. Four days later they returned to the song, and Andersson came up with the idea of using a French chanson-style arrangement with a descending piano line and a looser structure. Ulvaeus then recorded a demo using nonsense French words for lyrics, and took the recording home to write the lyrics for "The Winner Takes It All". According to Ulvaeus, he drank whiskey while he was writing, and it was the quickest lyric he ever wrote. He said, "I was drunk, and the whole lyric came to me in a rush of emotion in one hour." Ulvaeus said that when he gave the lyrics to Fältskog to read, "a tear or two welled up in her eyes. Because the words really affected her."

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. 'Cause one thing I can say is that 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". However, Ulvaeus admitted that the heartache of their breakup inspired the song, but noted that the words in the song should not be taken literally. He said: "Neither Agnetha nor I were winners in our divorce." 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, which Klosterman reports was "The Story of My Life." The booklet for the double CD compilation The Definitive Collection states "The Winner Takes It All" is the song where Bjorn admits that the sad experience of his and Agnetha's divorce the previous year left its mark on the lyrics."

This cover is the mellow ballad version by John Barrowman from his 2010 self-titled third studio album.

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