How ABBA’s Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus Turned Their ‘Difficult’ Divorce into a Chart-Topping Hit

To most ABBA fans, “The Winner Takes It All” is the perfect breakup song. What some don’t know is that the authenticity stemmed from the band’s real-life situation.

In ABBA: AGAINST THE ODDS, a documentary on the Swedish band premiering on Saturday, May 11 on CW, viewers are taken back to 1980 for the making of one of their biggest hits — and realize how hard it was on the band to perform it.

“One thing we learned was that everything starts with a song,” Björn Ulvaeus, 79, says in the documentary. “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 lyrics for “The Winner Takes It All” one day in the studio and the band was instantly connected to it. 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.

“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, says.

Ulvaeus adds, “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.”

“The Winner Takes It All” was featured on their wildly successful Super Trouper album in 1980. The same year they released the album, the marriage of Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson began to crumble and they decided to part ways.

“It wasn’t just the music. It was also love. It was a life lived together. Somehow all four of us,” Lyngstad, 78, says, as Andersson, 77, adds, “That was powerful. One of our best I think.”

Though the band managed to keep things professional amid their relationship troubles, it suddenly got too difficult to perform the song.

“We could feel that the song had suddenly got a bit heavy. It was not so fun anymore to record. There was something in the atmosphere. A bit tragic,” Fältskog says.

Ulvaeus adds: “We had an explosive story and creative period… and then it stopped.”

The band parted ways in 1982, with Fältskog admitting it was too hard to keep the band going. In 2022, the band made a rare red carpet appearance together for the premiere of their virtual concert series, which was in support of the band’s studio album Voyage, their first release in 40 years.

ABBA: AGAINST THE ODDS, directed by James Rogan, explores the journey of love, struggle, fame and epic songs that is ABBA.