One person’s view: “Its lethargic tempo would put me to sleep if the singing weren’t as bad as it were.” – dagwood525 @ Rate Your Music
The public’s view: 2.13 / 5.00, in the bottom 25% of #1 hits from 2000
Hearing Savage Garden’s “I Knew I Loved You” on the radio is like having your dog take a break from playing with you so that he can lick himself. You could watch patiently while ol’ Woof Woof cleanses his private area for three and a half minutes, but it’s far better to turn your attention elsewhere. Likewise, the first few notes of “I Knew I Loved You” should be your cue to change the station.
It isn’t just that the song is musically uninspiring, though it most definitely is. It also has mawkish lyrics that idealize the man’s love interest more than any Lionel Richie ballad ever could. Lead singer Darren Hayes describes his woman as having a thousand angels dancing around her. She is the flawless female that he always envisioned and loved in his dreams, a bespoke soulmate who was created specifically to make his life complete. (Yes, I know he was not actually singing about a female, but “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” applied to lite rock in that era just as it did to the military. Let’s play along with the charade.)
This song can be contrasted unfavorably with Billy Joel’s classic “Just the Way You Are”, which reassures a woman that she doesn’t have to change any of her disgusting quirks and foibles to please her partner. She probably eats spaghetti with her fingers and has a tattoo of a shirtless Michael Dukakis on an intimate area of her body, but Billy Joel loves her just the way she is. “I Knew I Loved You”, on the other hand, suggests that Darren Hayes loves the woman only because she seems to meet the unattainable feminine standard that existed in his mind before they met. This means that he simply hasn’t seen her defects yet, and now there will be pressure on her to maintain the illusion of perfection. One poorly timed belch and this relationship is over.
Despite the cloying message, or perhaps because of it, this ballad spent 17 weeks at #1 on the adult contemporary chart. Obviously, there must have been a major dearth of quality material for that format in early 2000. Where’s Michael Bolton when you need him?
This was the Australian duo’s second and final Hot 100 #1, following “Truly Madly Deeply”. I used to think that “Truly Madly Deeply” was a drag of a song, but it is positively peppy compared to “I Knew I Loved You”. The only interesting musical feature of “I Knew I Loved You” is a key change near the end. This type of modulation, moving all the notes up a half-step or even a full step, used to be common on hit records. (“Livin’ on a Prayer” is perhaps the best known example.) This shift can brighten the sound and give a song a burst of energy just as it might otherwise be wearing thin. There still isn’t any energy in “I Knew I Loved You”, but the key change gives the listener hope that this bout with Savage Garden is about to conclude and that better times are ahead.
There are #1s that are more awful than this, just as there are things your dog might do that are more malevolent than giving himself an unseemly tongue bath. The accusatory lyrics of “Separate Lives”, for example, are more repugnant than the ingratiating lyrics of “I Knew I Loved You”. Ultimately, though, I have to agree with the critics and fans who classify this as the first truly, madly, deeply bad chart-topper of the 2000s.
No comments:
Post a Comment