| "The Name of the Game" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by ABBA | ||||
| from the album The Album | ||||
| B-side | "I Wonder (Departure)" | |||
| Released | 17 October 1977 (Sweden) 22 October 1977 (UK) late 1977 (US) |
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| Format | 7" single | |||
| Recorded | May 31, 1977 at Marcus Music Studio |
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| Genre | Pop/Europop | |||
| Length | 4:51 | |||
| Label | Polar (Sweden) Epic (UK) Atlantic (US) |
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| Writer(s) | Benny Andersson Björn Ulvaeus Stig Anderson |
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| Producer | Benny Andersson Björn Ulvaeus |
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| Certification | Gold (UK) | |||
| ABBA singles chronology | ||||
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"The Name of the Game" is a 1977 song by Swedish pop group ABBA, and was released as the first single from the group's fifth studio album, The Album. It became a UK number one, topping the charts for four weeks in November 1977.
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"The Name of the Game", first called "A Bit of Myself", was the first song to be recorded for ABBA's 5th studio album, following the European and Australian tour. It was their most complex composition yet — with Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad sharing the lead vocals but with solo passages from both women — and contained the influences of the laid-back California sound of the day.
The opening riff on bass and synthesizer is inspired by Stevie Wonder's "I Wish" from 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life and both Andersson and Ulvaeus have acknowledged being inspired by Wonder's music during this part of ABBA's career.
A preliminary version of "The Name of the Game" was worked into the 1977 feature film ABBA: The Movie, for which it was written. When it was eventually finished, it was released as the lead single from The Album in October 1977. Originally, another track entitled "Hole in Your Soul" was intended for release, but those plans were soon shelved. "The Name of the Game" was released with a live version of "I Wonder (Departure)" as the B-side. This B-side was one of several songs written for the mini-musical The Girl With The Golden Hair, written by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson and originally performed by ABBA on their 1977 world tour. The recording used on the "The Name of the Game" single was recorded at Sydney Showground, Sydney, Australia on 3rd or 4 March 1977. A studio recorded version of the song was included on "The Album".
"The Name of The Game" also marks the last time Stig Anderson helped with the lyrics of a single.
"The Name of the Game" was not as successful as ABBA's previous singles since 1975. It was more of a Top 10 success, only topping the British charts. It was the second of three consecutive UK #1 singles after "Knowing Me, Knowing You", and before "Take a Chance on Me".[1]
It did reach the Top 5 in Belgium, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, and Zimbabwe, while reaching the Top 10 in Australia, West Germany, and Switzerland. On the Hot 100, where ABBA had not been embraced as strongly as in Europe, "The Name of the Game" bowed at #82 on 24 December 1977 and peaked at #12 on 11–18 March 1978.
An edited version of "The Name of the Game", which omitted the entire second verse of the song, reducing the length of the track from its original 4:51 to 3:58, was released on a promotional single in the USA. The U.S. radio edit of "The Name of the Game" then - apparently by mistake - found its way onto the 1982 Polar Music compilation The Singles: The First Ten Years, and then onto a number of hits packages issued on both vinyl & CD in the 1980s & early 1990s. It also appears on the original 1992 version of the group's ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits album. Not until the 1999 remastered edition of ABBA Gold did the song appear in its entirety on that compilation.
When PolyGram released the first digitally remastered CD version of The Album in 1997, the fact that one of the nine tracks was nearly a minute shorter than it was supposed to be somehow managed to elude the remastering engineers - the U.S. edit was again used by mistake and the first edition was subsequently withdrawn.[2]
"The Name of the Game" was sampled in 1996 by the Fugees for their hit "Rumble in the Jungle", the first time that an ABBA song had been legally sampled by another act. [1]
| Chart (1977) | Position |
|---|---|
| Australian Singles Chart | 6 |
| Austrian Singles Chart | 12 |
| Belgian Singles Chart | 2 |
| British Singles Chart | 1 |
| Canadian Singles Chart | 15 |
| Dutch Singles Chart | 2 |
| Eurochart Hot 100 | 1 |
| Finnish Singles Chart | 5 |
| French Singles Chart | 12 |
| German Singles Chart | 7 |
| Irish Singles Chart | 2 |
| New Zealand Singles Chart | 4 |
| Norwegian Singles Chart | 3 |
| Swedish Singles Chart | 2 |
| Swiss Singles Chart | 6 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 | 12 |
| Rhodesia | 4 |
| Mexico | 10 |
| South Africa | 3 |
| Preceded by "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie" by Baccara |
UK Singles Chart number one single 5 November 1977 – 26 November 1977 |
Succeeded by "Mull of Kintyre" by Wings |
| Preceded by "Way Down" by Elvis Presley |
Eurochart Hot 100 Singles number one single 10 November 1977 – 22 December 1977 |
Like most of ABBA's videos, the video was directed and shot by Lasse Hallström.
During the video, the four members of the group are shown playing the board game "Fia-spel", the Scandinavian version of the German board game "Mensch ärgere dich nicht", which is a variation of the English board game "Ludo".