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. A lot of people think it's straight out of reality, but it's not". 'Cause one thing I can say is that there wasn't a winner or a loser in our case. 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. 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. According to Ulvaeus, he drank whiskey while he was writing, and it was the quickest lyrics he ever wrote. 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". Four days later they returned to the song, and Andersson came up the idea of using a French chanson-style arrangement with a descending piano line and a looser structure. 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. 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. According to Andersson, the idea for the song suddenly came up "from old ideas, from old small musical pieces" they had. Ulvaeus and Andersson started writing "The Winner Takes It All" in the summer of 1979 in a cottage on the island of Viggsö. In a 2006 poll for a Channel Five programme, "The Winner Takes It All" was voted "Britain's Favourite Break-Up Song." This feat was replicated in a 2010 poll for ITV. In a 1999 poll for Channel 5, "The Winner Takes It All" was voted Britain's favourite ABBA song. It was written by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, with Agnetha Fältskog singing the lead vocal. It was also the group's final top 10 hit in the United States. The song peaked at No.1 in several countries, including the UK, where it became their eighth chart-topper. The single's B-side was the non-album track " Elaine". Released as the first single from the group's seventh studio album, Super Trouper (1980), it is a ballad in the key of G-flat major, reflecting on the end of a relationship. " The Winner Takes It All" is a song recorded by Swedish pop group ABBA. “Happens all the time.For other uses, see Winner takes all (disambiguation). “Yeah, it was too small for him,” lies the officer who’s inducting Paul. The film follows the clothes, not the men, as they’re taken to a factory to be scrubbed, washed, mended and ultimately given to new recruits – one of whom, 17-year-old Paul Bauymer (newcomer Felix Kammerer), gets his new uniform, looks at the name tag and points out, “This already belongs to somebody.” In a chilling sequence, soldiers strip the clothes off their dead comrades, leaving a pile of muddy, torn garments alongside the rows of black coffins. It’s a technique Berger and his cinematographer James Friend return to again and again, deliberately placing their story in a world that would look like paradise if not for the blood squabbles of humans.Īnd “All Quiet” doesn’t give us time to bask in that beauty before long, we’re in a short, brutal battle, and then the ground is littered with dead bodies. “All Quiet on the Western Front” starts with the bucolic landscape of Western Europe in 1917 we know we’re in for carnage, but first we see hills and trees, clouds sitting in a pink-tinged sky, fog slipping through the woods. The book was about humanity and inhumanity, and so was the 1930 Hollywood version directed by Lewis Milestone, that depicted the soldiers as Germans but had them speak English that language choice both made it more palatable to English-speaking audiences and easier to take as the Everyman story that in some ways it was.īerger’s “All Quiet” is different it’s in German, with a largely German cast and no way to avoid the realization that the hell in which these young soldiers are being immersed - and the way in which they lost the war - will directly lead to the rise of the Nazis and to World War II. There was nothing militaristic or partisan about Remarque’s novel, which is one of the reasons it was banned and burned by the Nazis when they came to power, thanks in part to stoking racist resentment of what was seen as a humiliating defeat in the First World War. Given the power of its images and the terror we see in these young faces on the battlefield, it’s hard to imagine that the film won’t elicit that empathy.
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