Music / Super Trouper

The winner takes it all, the loser standing small...

Super Trouper is the seventh studio album by Swedish pop band ABBA and was released in 1980. Many believe that this was a completely different sound to Voulez-Vous because of the backlash that the band had received by their annoyed fandom for making a disco-orientated feel, and were thought to have gone back to their "original roots".

Unrelated to the 2001 comedy film Super Troopers.

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Track Listing

Side One

1. "Super Trouper" (4:13)
2. "The Winner Takes It All" (4:55)
3. "On and On and On" (3:41)
4. "Andante, Andante" (4:38)
5. "Me and I" (4:53)

Side Two

1. "Happy New Year" (4:24)
2. "Our Last Summer" (4:18)
3. "The Piper" (3:25)
4. "Lay All Your Love on Me" (4:33)
5. "The Way Old Friends Do" (2:53)

2001 CD re-release bonus tracks

1. "Elaine" (3:44)
2. "Put On Your White Sombrero" (4:34)

Personnel

• Benny Andersson – synthesizer, keyboards, vocals and record producer
• Agnetha Fältskog – vocals
• Anni-Frid Lyngstad – vocals
• Björn Ulvaeus – acoustic guitar, vocals and record producer
• Ola Brunkert – drums
• Lars Carlsson – horn
• Rutger Gunnarsson – bass, guitar
• Janne Kling – flute, saxophone
• Per Lindvall – drums
• Janne Schaffer – guitar
• Åke Sundqvist – percussion
• Mike Watson – bass
• Lasse Wellander – guitar
• Kajtek Wojciechowski – saxophone
• Engineer: Michael B. Tretow

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Tropes Included

• Allegory: "The Piper" uses the classic fairy tale "The Pied Piper" as one of these for all the influence dictators had during the Cold War.
• Alone in a Crowd: "Super Trouper" plays with this, as it's about how the singer normally feels alone and lost performing before massive crowds of her admirers — but this particular gig is different, as her lover is somewhere in the audience, and because "somewhere in the crowd there's you" she doesn't feel so alone. The Super Trouper lights of the title act as a symbol of her isolation.
• Break-Up Song:
  • "The Winner Takes It All" is about Bjørn and Agnetha's divorce, which apparently was not so amicable.
  • "The Way Old Friends Do" is a more amicable version of perhaps the same breakup.
• Celebrity Is Overrated: "Super Trouper".
  All I do is eat and sleep and sing
  Wishing every show was the last show...
• Christmas Songs: "Happy New Year" was supposed to be this at the production stage, but was changed to a New Year's song for some reason.
• Domestic Abuse:
  • The narrator of "Put On Your White Sombrero" is happy her abuser is leaving.
  • Elaine is apparently being subjected to this by authority figures in her life.
• "Double, Double" Title: "On and On and On" and "Andante, Andante".
• Fading into the Next Song: On the original album, "Lay All Your Love On Me" fades into the applause at the start of "The Way Old Friends Do". Some of the remastered versions don't do this, however.
• Gratuitous Spanish: "Andante", Andante", which means "Slowly, Slowly".
• Grief Song: "The Winner Takes it All". Probably the saddest song ever written about a divorce.
• Intercourse with You: "Andante, Andante".
  Take it easy with me, please
  Touch me gently like a summer evening breeze.
• Light Is Not Good: "Super Trouper".
  Super trouper, beams are gonna blind me...
• Lyrical Dissonance:
  • "Super Trouper" a cheerful song about how stressful and boring it gets being a celebrity. Though it is also partly about how the singer draws strength and perseverance from the fact that the person she loves is somewhere in the crowd of this particular show.
  • Both "Elaine" and "Me & I" sound oddly upbeat for being about people who are losing their minds one way or another.
  • The voice in "Put on your White Sombrero" sounds happy that her boyfriend is leaving her, making several reasonable arguments why she's better off without him – and yet in the last verse she indicates that she is sad to see him go, making it a kind-of heartbroken break-up song.
  • Given how this is ABBA's M.O., it is really likely this is the case with "Our Last Summer", because it is not at all clear from the text that this Harry person is her husband. The fact that she sounds in love and is reminiscing about their last summer, without making it sound like it was the previous summer since in the meantime he has become a family man and got a job in a bank, makes it sound like they were together for a while, then he met and married someone else, and maybe they picked up where they left off later, maybe not.
    How dull it seems
    Yet you're the hero of my dreams
• Magical Flutist: "The Piper", who is controlling the narrator and others around them.
  We're all following a strange melody – we're all summoned by a tune;
  We're following the Piper, and we danced beneath the moon for him—
  And we danced beneath the moon.
• The Power of Friendship: "The Way Old Friends Do".
• Rock-Star Song: "Super Trouper". Although it certainly doesn't paint a very glamorous picture of being a celebrity...
• Sanity Slippage Song: "Me and I".
• Sibling Yin-Yang: "Me and I" has the only child version.
  We're like sun and rainy weather
  Sometimes we're a hit together
• Split Personality: "Me and I" has elements of this.
  I am to myself what Jekyll must have been to Hyde
• Writing Around Trademarks: Averted. "Super Trouper", as may be inferred from the lyrics of that song, is a model of stage spotlight (the front cover of the album also shows the group illuminated by one). The group headed off any problems by seeking the manufacturer's permission before using the name.

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