9 February 1985
Really this is your fault. You, with your fawning adulation for ‘The Winner Takes It All’ far beyond its merits, turning Bjorn and Benny’s heads so that they forgot about making glam-disco-pop masterpieces and instead charged off with Tim Rice down the road of blustery West End musicals. Thanks for that.
As if trying to outdo ‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart’ in a nuclear power balladry arms race, ‘I Know Him So Well’ features not one but two people shouting at me. These characters are, I gather, a wife and a mistress reflecting regretfully on the man they once shared. Not regret that they didn’t feed him balls-first into a wood-chipper, but regret that it didn’t work out with Bjorn Benny Tim this stud-muffin: the sort of top-notch insight to the female psyche you only get from three middle-aged men. Paige and Dickson, stalwarts of this sort of material, do what it is they do. It’s their world; they’re not the Johnny-come-latelies here.
And so ended Bjorn and Benny’s post-ABBA hit-making career. I wouldn’t mind seeing a West End musical where Frida and Agnetha, personifying Mamma Mia! the stage-show-and-film and the 2021 ABBA comeback album, sing a duet called ‘Well Look Who’s Come Crawling Back’.
