And in the end he needs a little bit more than me, more security . . . and freedom, I know him so well.

In 1985 two bitter rivals from the world of Original Cast Recordings collaborated on a magical number from the soon-to-be world famous musical Chess. Putting it into a modern context, this audacious move of pairing two high-flying rivals from the same musical world (but very different continents) would’ve been like getting Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain to rock out together. At the time this coming together of Barbara Dickson and Elaine Paige (or Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson depending who you were down for) was like the coming together of two powerful but dissimilar chemical agents; one the raw Celtic brunette forged in the fires of folk and the other a posh London town blonde. The combination, as I’m sure anyone who has heard the track will attest to, was like a dawn jungle napalm drop.

Barbara Dickson (shown above) played the once doting and now annoyed Russian wife and Paige was the long-suffering American mistress. The song managed to tackle the issue of showing both sides of the story from these women in love and the points of view of their possibly extant relationships with a self-centred chess champion; a situation that I’m sure a lot of ladies out there can sympathise with.

Lyricist Tim Rice was going through the beginnings of a divorce during the Chess writing period. Listening to the majority of “I Know Him So Well,” you could be convinced that the song was nothing more than a particularly well-crafted love song. But within the song is a kernel of hate, all three of the song’s creators wanted the woman of the world to feel something of what they had felt in their darkest hours.

When, in the closing seconds of the song, Paige (shown above) moans how that “And in the end he needs a little bit more than me, more security” and Dickson states that “he needs his fantasy and freedom” they’re both speaking Rice’s words. Rice is letting the female of the species know that whatever they do, they won’t ever be able to fully satisfy their man. Of course mistresses are already aware of the rickety nature of their duplicitous relationship, as are wives who find that tell-tale extra sim card (the noughties version of lipstick on his collar) in their husband’s wallet. But Rice’s barrel was aimed at those safe-as-houses housewives who might’ve thought twice as those closing lines endlessly circle the radio waves (even now). He was hoping to put a sliver of doubt in every woman’s heart, a shard of ice in every relationship in suburbia. Using a backing track that is unarguably cheesy and reeks strongly of those nasty 80s keyboards and fake orchestration, he laid his trap. Adding to the drama, Rice who was married to another was in an intimate relationship with Paige and as the real-life drama unfolded it seemed to mirror the one on stage.