1 December 1984
Its title is the same as a line from the chorus of ‘Careless Whisper’, plus it’s also about a man who “fooled around” and got caught out. There’s a whiff of ‘Against All Odds’-style male midlife-crisis angst from it too. So, you have a good idea of what’s being aimed at here with ‘I Should Have Known Better’. I remember hearing this on Saturday morning kids’ TV and instantly hating its sickly smarminess: “I should have known better / to lie to one as beautiful as you” is a truly ghastly thing to say or sing. The song’s climactic “ai-ai-ai-ai” is particularly undignified, as if the down-and-out person in Phil Collins’ ‘Another Day In Paradise’ turned out to be Carmen Miranda.
Even worse, the dreary video I saw on that accursed Saturday morning acts out the song’s storyline. Some sad sack of a studio engineer evidently did the dirt on his wife and young child but, thanks to hearing Jim’s song in the recording booth, he sees the error of his ways and reconciles with them. Jim even does that ‘notch one up to me!’ gesture with his finger at seeing the result. Happy to oblige here.
