The other day I came across this song as I was listening to an old CD compilation of duets titled “Duets.” It’s a great feeling to find awesome songs which you had either forgotten or never had investigated further in terms of the name of the song and the artists. I Know Him So Well was the final song on this compilation and from the first note, I was hooked and could not get the song out of my head for the rest of the day.
Upon further investigation, I found out that this song was part of a concept album and the subsequent musical Chess. I’m not a fan of musical at all but for some reason I was immediately able to picture this song as part of a musical. In order to understand how it all fits into a musical, the song is sung by 2 women, one of which is the estranged wife of a Russian chess champion while the other is his mistress. With this knowledge, you can probably understand why the song is titled I Know Him So Well.
I wasn’t too surprised to also discover that the composers of the song (and the entire concept album) were in fact Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, better known as the musicians of the mega Swedish pop group ABBA. The song certainly does have an ABBA-esque sound and at the moments during the song you can hear touches of Agnetha and Anni-Frida. In hindsight, I think this song would have sounded better and would have been a bigger hit if the ABBA girls had sung.
That’s not saying that Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson don’t do a good job, because they do. But it’s so ABBA-esque that you might as well get the whole to reunite and sing it as if it was old times.
The song was a worldwide hit, and spent 4 weeks at the top of the UK charts and continues to be the highest-selling song in the UK by a duo.
If you were looking for a song where an estranged (and cheated) wife and the mistress get together and plan revenge on the man, then you cannot go further than I Know Him So Well. Enjoy this classic 80s ballad.
