Well when the game is over, I won't walk out a loser, And I know that I'll walk out of here again And I know that someday I'll walk out of here again But now I'm trapped, oh yeah!. Well it seem like I've been playin' the game way too long And it seems the game I played has made you strong. Writer Dave Marsh has termed the lyric "a cruel and vivid crescendo that build to the point of snapping and end each verse and chorus with an expostulated 'Trapped!'" In contrast, Lindsay Planer of All Music Guide has termed the song "optimistic and funky". The artist credit was billed on the 45-rpm label as being from Jimmy Cliff and Jamaica, the latter apparently being the backing group heard on the record. Cliff had recorded Stevens' " Wild World" a couple of years earlier, and here Stevens assembled a production recalling those found on his 1967 album Matthew and Son. "Trapped" was arranged by Del Newman and produced by Cat Stevens. Both songs were written during a downturn in Cliff's career that followed his 1960s hits and preceded the mid-1970s successes of the film The Harder They Come. It was released on Island Records and backed with "Struggling Man", although some websites list the two reversed in some markets (the record saw release in areas that included the United Kingdom, Ghana, and the Caribbean region, but not the United States). Cliff recorded "Trapped" as a single that was released in 1972.