ELAINE PAIGE AND BARBARA DICKSON – "I Know Him So Well"

The duet Agnetha and Frida never got to sing, “I Know Him So Well” is the tenth Abba number one in disguise, though I think it would have been better without the disguise. Still, Abba were just over two years gone and writers have to write, so Bjorn and Benny met with Tim Rice and conjured up a shaggy dog of a musical about various romantic goings-on at an international chess tournament with extremely vague analogies to then-current global affairs. As with “Argentina” Rice’s lyric is subtly misleading, once more to do with how people’s words and actions are misinterpreted according to different perspectives. The song is sung by two women apart, in parallel lives, both of whom have had an affair with the same chess grandmaster; they are rueful if not especially surprised (“I could have…/Learned about the man before I fell”). The key couplet, however, is Paige’s “He needs a little bit more than me/More security” followed by Dickson’s “He needs his fantasy and freedom.” In other words, he is a bullshit merchant, a liar-by-night. The joint deep breath, or sigh, they take before the final, shoulder-shrugging “I know him so well” suggests that subliminally they have long since worked this out.

Although artfully done – catch the flames of desperation in the “Why?” of Paige and Dickson’s climactic “Why am I falling apart?” – the record doesn’t really work because it is too far divorced from the Abba landscape we knew all too well; where there was never any doubt that Agnetha and Frida were describing something chillingly, or warmly, real, there is equally no question that here we are dealing with two seasoned West End pros singing to the gallery. Secondly the disappointingly dated musical arrangement – very 1976 Rock Follies – lacks the adventurousness of Abba’s finest work even (especially) by their 1976 standards. And finally in the canon of meditative show tune ballads it doesn’t even start to live up to something like “I Don’t Know How To Love Him” in which Yvonne Elliman’s voice is palpably hurt in its own awe – how to afford physical love to someone you worship as a God? In contrast the foreknowledge of “I Know Him So Well” is efficiently projected, with its clever counterpart of Dickson’s warm, honeyed tones against Paige’s strident declamations, but rather pallidly delivered.

i cannot write about music. there is music i like and i don’t know how to convey that, except through personal enthusiasm. there is music i don’t like, and i don’t spend much time on that. between the two is music that is, so goes the phrase, “part of the furniture”. THIS song is a sofa sat on for so long that it’s become part of you. i have no idea how you can score stuff like this. well done.

(i like that in Tom’s Last FM data -> the title of this song is ALL CAPS)

TOTPWatch: Paige & Dickson twice performed ‘I Know Him So Well’ on Top of the Pops;

10 January 1985. Also in the studio that week were; Strawberry Switchblade and Bronski Beat. Mike Smith & Mike Read were the hosts.

7 February 1985. Also in the studio that week were; King, Phil Collins and Howard Jones. Richard Skinner and Gary Davies were the hosts.

more important q then: favourite Harry Hill w/ Stouffa the cat?

mine has to be D*** B*** S******** “B******** at T******’s”. it’s hard to say why

NO WAI!! so so sorry mr bunny sir.

“Love And Pride,” one of the many beneficiaries – and probably the least deserving one – of the post-seasonal stock clearance policy which seems to have dictated the early 1985 charts, with lots of underperforming 1984 discs (“Solid,” “Dancing In The Dark,” “Yah Mo B There,” the next number one) getting a second wind in the absence of much else.

In addition “IKHSW” was already in the bargain bins at WH Smiths, Our Price etc. when it charted and undoubtedly that helped. The success of Foreigner also had much to do with WEA’s, um, individualistic approach to singles marketing but I can’t remember what (if anything) was given away free with each copy (see also “Baby Jane” which largely got to number one on the back of the free beach ball each customer also received).

King’s final hit was called “Torture”; never a truer word, &c.

To me this song has always represented Thatcher’s Britain when she was most in command: that 1985 moment when the Tories were riding high, the Cold War gloom had lifted slightly, the miners’ strike was over, bankers were getting rich, and everyone was going to West End musicals. I suspect it fused in my mind with the Goodies’ parody of Evita, which had Tim Brooke-Taylor in drag as Thatcher/Peron singing “Don’t Cry for Me, Marge and Tina”.

I can’t have been alone in seeing it as a UK song that didn’t really speak to Australia, because after entering our charts in March it reached only number 21, although it did hang around for six months. It wasn’t that we weren’t aware of Chess: we sent “One Night in Bangkok” all the way to the top.

Listening to it now, the sense of what might have been had ABBA still been together is strong, but their late singles make me wonder whether this would ever have been an ABBA track, given where their music seemed to be heading. All hypothetical, of course, but it’s fun to wonder. (Actually, I’d be just as happy if the last singles hadn’t existed and their final word was effectively “Like An Angel Passing Through My Room”.)

This is solid in many ways, as one would expect from Benny and Björn (and Rice, come to that), but the staginess of the vocals isn’t really my thing, and as I have no “I was there” nostalgia for the track I’ll agree with Tom’s 5.

Don’t you mean Jer-han-er-you-haarry, Feh-heb-ar-you-haary?

This was a no-show in the States, unlike “One Night in Bangkok,” so I have absolutely no memories of it. It’s not bad but, maybe given the Tim Rice connection, it sounds like it could just as easily have been a Lloyd Webber song. Which isn’t a compliment. I like punctum’s idea that this is the duet Agnetha and Frida didn’t sing–their vocals probably would’ve pushed this one up a bit higher for me. 4 as is.

What’s always interested me is how Bjorn and Tim worked together since both were accomplished lyricists. I remember Tim saying that some of Bjorn’s guide lyrics for rhythmic illustration were “embarrassingly good”. You’re always tempted to think that B & B retired after this until the Abba revival kicked in in the early 90s but in fact they remained prolific writers for artists who never crossed over from Sweden. Memo to self : check Youtube/Spotify for some examples.

King were absolutely awful- the perfect illustration of how bare the British pop cupboard had got by this stage (see also the next no 1). I’m sure they were around as mods as far back as 1980 and by this stage they were trying any style (often two or three on the same song)to try and get a break. “Love And Pride” has a partially-redemptive hookline but their album “Steps In Time” is unspeakable. The lyrics in particular seem to have been assembled on the infinite number of monkeys principle. Check out if you dare “Kiss The Spiky Fringe” which trumps even Kajagoogoo’s “Ooh To Be Aah” as the ultimate example of 80s vacuity in pop.

Yep, Frida and Agnetha would have seriously lifted this song (compare with a great late abba song in similar territory such as ‘When all is said and done’). That special tone their voices had individually and together would have helped, but also one suspects their basic v. convincing aging/bitter-but-still-v.sexy-damn-it moppet-ism would have helped salvage the lyrics. And all of that in turn might have helped lift the players – it’s Bjorn and Benny and the abba house band doing the instrumentation but you’d never know it – they sound bored/tired.
Anyhow, there’s some good stuff in this single somewhere, but that final pseudo-plaintive ‘I know him so well’ is too gruesome. Can’t go higher than:
4

MikeMCSG #25: Time to tackle Kristina från Duvemåla? (I’d like to myself, but haven’t yet.) YouTube has some samples – try Du Måste Finnas.

The Benny Andersson Band has a new UK release out which looks intriguing.

“Check out if you dare “Kiss The Spiky Fringe” which trumps even Kajagoogoo’s “Ooh To Be Aah” as the ultimate example of 80s vacuity in pop.”

“Ooh to be aah” is vacuus but in a strangely sublime way.

the title of that King track alone makes me think of an 80s version of Nathan Barley, only without the humour obv.

I think everyone’s missing Abba on this thread and wondering what sort of sound a 1985 version of Abba might have produced

Tom – yep you’re right.

#31 – Well, on ‘More ABBA Gold’ you can hear ‘I Am The City’, which – I think – is a demo from an abandoned comeback session in about 1983. Its really good, but perhaps the joy and tenderness couldn’t ever return.

An album of songs like ‘Under Attack’ and ‘The Day Before You Came’ would have been astonishing, but perhaps something that would make me very unhappy to hear.

#36, you’re not quite alone. iirc the ‘now 6’ (or possibly ‘hits 3’) track commentary for ‘taste of your tears’ describes it as a classic that would have been a hit at any point in the preceding 30 years.

#8 and paul young’s backing singers were called ‘the royal family’ i think

EastEnders fans might have already noted that this suitably melodramatic showtune was sitting at the top of the charts when the residents of Albert Square first barged onto our screens.
Perhaps Bianca and Sam could resolve their dispute over Rick-Kayeee by singing a duet together. It would make a change from chucking pints over one another at the Vic.

Oh, Mike – what a great story. I was also at a place in my life where the song had resonance, despite the staginess. And I share Conrad’s delight about Barbara Dickson having a number one. She played Paisley Town Hall! What more could I ask! And Punctum’s observation about that final hesitant sigh is the key to the whole thing. It’s a bit of a girly song and shamelessly melodramatic, but because of the personal history, an 8 or 9 for me.

Grossly unfashionable, even at the time, but for me there were (and I suspect still are) a couple of serious spine-tingle moments in El and Babs’s delivery. I kept quiet about it – I was 12 and a half, for goodness’ sake – but rather liked hearing the record.

Missed all the chat about pop-post-Band-Aid, the fallout, the peak of pop’s hierarchy – 1985 struck me as a mess, which chimes with those thoughts.

#47 The list of no 1’s would certainly give the impression 1985 was dire but the year that produced “The Boys Of Summer” , “The Whole Of The Moon” and the release that became the first new no 1 of 1986 wasn’t all bad. In year the closest one of my favourites got to the top spot was Red Box’s “Lean On Me” which peaked at 3.