A real fan of ABBA

Good!  There should be more passionately felt but civilly expressed disagreement in the world; this would be a bland place if everyone rated The Winner Takes It All as some sort of peerless masterpiece.  For me it's neither a masterpiece (it IS very well made, as I'm always happy to acknowledge), nor is it anywhere near the front of the pursuing pack of ABBA songs trying to chase down the likes of Knowing Me, Knowing You, Dancing Queen and The Name Of The Game, which are way, way out in front.

Saying you don't like something is easy, since it's a personal reaction based on honest feelings, but saying why you don't like something can be tough.  Having had a bit more of a think about why I don't like TWTIA, I've come to realise that I might be being a bit hard on Agnetha.  I still think she took the wrong tack with it (or was encouraged to take the wrong tack), but the end effect may've been out of her hands in any case, since the main problem may ultimately lie with Bjorn's words.  As I've said before, I think that as he became more proficient at writing in English, Bjorn developed a tendency to overwork lyrics at times, replacing simple but effective words and phrases with more complicated ones, which sometimes led to the balance of a song being upset, or its thrust being hampered (this tendency reached its high or low point, depending on you POV, in songs such as Our Last Summer, I Let The Music Speak and The Day Before You Came).  With TWTIA he overdoes the gambling metaphors to the point of undermining the song's credibility, since it's built around the confessions of an emotionally wounded person, and people tend to express themselves simply and directly when they're hurt or upset, rather than using metaphorical language.  So what I think I'm saying now is that Agnetha was probably onto a bit of a hiding to nothing regardless of how she opted to approach delivering the lyrics, but what she should've been doing at all cost at any rate was reining in any urge to over-emote and 'act out' the feelings being expressed by them.