Synopsis
Agnetha Faltskog portrays a woman starting over after a painful breakup. She moves into a new apartment, carries in boxes, rearranges furniture, paints the walls, and gradually turns the bare space into a home. Her solitary routine is contrasted with studio footage of all four ABBA members, filmed against mirrored walls and shaped by reflective visual effects. The modest domestic setting and deliberately subdued mood reinforce the song's portrait of loneliness, regret, and the difficult process of rebuilding life alone.
Factoids & Trivia
- The promo was filmed in November 1981, with location work taking place in Lasse Hallstrom's Stockholm apartment and the group sequences filmed at Filmbolaget Studios.
- The video was reportedly made in a hurry because "One Of Us" was chosen as a single at the last minute. A different edit, containing a few slightly altered scenes, was shown in West Germany.
- Most of the visual effects are created through mirrors and reflections rather than elaborate sets, giving the studio scenes a fragmented, introspective quality.
- The song was the first single from *The Visitors*, an album marked by darker themes and the personal strain surrounding ABBA at the end of its original run.
- The apartment setting is notably ordinary and unglamorous for a major pop production. That restrained approach became one of the clip's defining features and helped distinguish it from ABBA's more colorful earlier videos.
- "One Of Us" became ABBA's final major worldwide hit. The video has subsequently appeared in official ABBA compilations and remains one of the group's most recognizable late-period promos.