The Name of the Game ABBA: The Unfinished Film Song
The Name of the Game ABBA released almost didn't exist as a finished song at all.
It started as a loose fragment written for a scene in the band's own movie.
Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus called that fragment "A Bit of Myself" and left it unfinished for months.
Manager Stig Anderson helped turn it into real lyrics, one of his last songwriting credits with the group.
Once it was done, the song spent four weeks at number one in Britain.
This is the chart-verified story behind it.
It's built from this site's own Billboard year-end data and cross-checked against outside chart and interview sources.
Benny Andersson, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Agnetha Faltskog and Bjorn Ulvaeus arriving in the Netherlands, November 1976.
Image credit: Photo by Bert Verhoeff / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (Nationaal Archief).
Where The Name of the Game ABBA Actually Started
A Fragment Called "A Bit of Myself"
The song began life with no lyrics and barely a shape.
Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus wrote a piece of music for a scene in ABBA: The Movie.
That was the group's 1977 concert-tour film.
They gave it a working title, "A Bit of Myself."
It stayed a rough cue rather than a finished single.
The scene it was written for shows Agnetha Faltskog's character in a kind of daydream.
She's working through her own uncertainty.
That mood of hesitation carried straight through into the finished lyrics.
Fans curious about the artist behind that story can read the full ABBA career arc on this site.
The Manager's Last Credit on an ABBA Single
Stig Anderson, the band's manager and the co-founder of their label Polar Music, helped finish the lyric.
He shares the songwriting credit with Andersson and Ulvaeus on the finished record.
It turned into one of the final times Anderson received that kind of co-writing credit on an ABBA single.
Andersson and Ulvaeus increasingly wrote alone as the group's albums grew more ambitious in the years that followed.
A fragment born out of a movie scene ended up marking something bigger.
It was a quiet handoff inside the band's own songwriting team.
Six Pieces, One Song, Built in a Brand New Room
The Bass Line Borrowed From Stevie Wonder
Andersson and Ulvaeus built the finished track out of six separate musical parts, stitched into a single flowing song.
The opening bass-and-synthesizer figure draws directly from Stevie Wonder's "I Wish."
That was a hit still fresh on the radio at the time.
The rest of the arrangement leans toward the smoother California sound of the mid-70s.
It sits closer to the Eagles or Fleetwood Mac than to ABBA's earlier singles.
It's a noticeably more adult record than the group's Eurovision-era hits.
The lyric sits with real romantic uncertainty instead of pure pop shine.
Two Lead Voices Trading the Same Verse
Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad split the lead vocal between them.
Rather than singing every line together, they trade verses, each carrying their own section of the story.
The melody stretches across a wide range for both singers, from A3 up to C sharp 5.
That range is part of why the song still sounds demanding to sing nearly 50 years later.
The group tracked the finished version on May 31, 1977, at Marcus Music Studio in Solna, a brand new room for the band at the time.
The single's B-side, a live recording of "I Wonder (Departure)," came from a different stop entirely, taped at Sydney Showground during the group's Australian tour that March.
Benny Andersson, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Faltskog, pictured the year before this song's session.
Andersson co-wrote the track, and Lyngstad and Faltskog went on to share its lead vocal.
Image credit: Photo by Bert Verhoeff / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (Nationaal Archief).
The Name of the Game ABBA Chart Run, Country by Country
Four Weeks at #1 in Britain
Epic Records released the single in the UK on October 14, 1977.
Polar Music followed three days later with the Swedish release.
The single entered the UK singles countdown at a modest number 20.
A week later it jumped to number 5.
In the first week of November 1977, it knocked Baccara's "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie" off the top spot.
It held number one for four straight weeks, a bigger run than most of the group's other UK chart-toppers.
Listen to that same recording right now on The Name of the Game.
It's streaming free on this site's own jukebox.
A Near-Miss in the US
The American chart run for The Name of the Game ABBA took longer.
It also landed lower than the UK run did.
It peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1978, just outside the Top 10.
It fared better on the Adult Contemporary chart, reaching number 9.
This site's own year-end Billboard data places it at number 97 for 1978, the same year the Hot 100 peak landed.
Chart success elsewhere in Europe and beyond told a different story than the US run:
- Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland and Sweden: peaked at number 2
- Finland, Norway and South Africa: reached the Top 5
- Australia, West Germany, Switzerland and Mexico: reached the Top 10
The single earned a Gold certification in the UK and sold roughly 140,000 copies in Sweden alone.
| Chart | Peak Position |
|---|---|
| UK Singles Chart | #1 (four weeks) |
| US Billboard Hot 100 | #12 |
| US Adult Contemporary | #9 |
| Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden | #2 |
| This site's 1978 year-end Hot 100 | #97 |
Compare that whole international run against the rest of the decade with the Random 70s Song Generator, which lines up chart peaks song by song.
Take a Chance on Me would match its own UK number one the following January, keeping the group's British run going into 1978.
A Board Game Video and a Sample Almost 20 Years Later
Lasse Hallstrom Points the Camera at a Swedish Board Game
Director Lasse Hallstrom shot the clip for this single too.
He made most of ABBA's music videos across the decade.
Instead of a stage performance, the video shows the group playing Fia, a Scandinavian board game similar to Ludo.
It's a small, domestic scene for a song built around six stitched-together musical ideas and a five-country chart sweep.
Critics at the time responded to the song itself more than the video.
Record Mirror called it flatly "the best thing they've ever done or ever will do."
Decades later, Billboard ranked it #6 on a list of ABBA's 15 greatest songs.
Rolling Stone placed it at #3 on its own ranking of the group's 25 best.
The Fugees Turn It Into a Sample
Match this same reflective, romantic mood against other tracks from the decade with the Mood Song Matcher.
In 1996, the Fugees sampled the song for "Rumble in the Jungle."
It was made for the soundtrack of a documentary about the Muhammad Ali and George Foreman fight.
It was the first time another act legally sampled an ABBA recording.
That was a rare approval, since the group rarely cleared its catalog for anyone.
That clearance opened the door for the wave of ABBA samples and interpolations that followed in the years after.
A song that began as an unfinished film cue ended up somewhere unexpected.
It echoed through a completely different genre almost 20 years later.
Read more of the group's real chart history at Music of the 70s.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was The Name of the Game ABBA originally called?
The Name of the Game started life as an unfinished piece.
Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus called it A Bit of Myself.
They wrote it to accompany a scene in the 1977 film ABBA: The Movie before it had any real lyrics.
Stig Anderson, the band's manager, later helped turn that fragment into a finished song.
Who sings lead vocals on The Name of the Game?
Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad share the lead vocal on The Name of the Game.
They trade verses rather than singing in unison throughout.
The arrangement stretches across a wide vocal range, from A3 up to C sharp 5.
That gives each singer distinct space inside the same song.
How high did The Name of the Game chart in the UK and US?
The Name of the Game reached number one on the UK Singles Chart in November 1977.
It held that spot for four weeks.
In the United States it peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1978, just missing the Top 10.
It also reached number 9 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
What was Stig Anderson's role in writing The Name of the Game?
Stig Anderson, ABBA's manager and Polar Music co-founder, shares a songwriting credit on The Name of the Game.
He wrote it alongside Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus.
It became one of the last ABBA singles where Anderson received that kind of co-writing credit.
Andersson and Ulvaeus increasingly wrote alone in the years that followed.
Has The Name of the Game been sampled by another artist?
The Fugees sampled The Name of the Game for their 1996 track Rumble in the Jungle.
It was made for the soundtrack of a documentary about the Muhammad Ali and George Foreman fight.
That marked the first time another act legally sampled an ABBA recording, opening the door for the sample clearances that followed.
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