You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies

This 1967 song was released as a flipside to a (slight) remake of "Fakin' It."

The theme of the song is common enough: an entreaty to a potential lover. However, the speaker does not take the usual tacks of begging, promising, flattering, etc.

No, this person wants to argue and insult her into being his girlfriend. His premise? It is in her own best "interest," and she seems ignorant of that, to her own detriment.

The speaker posits himself as the more intelligent of the pair: "You don't know that you love me... What you think isn't always true... You don't begin to comprehend." He knows what is best for her, and it is him.

She doesn't appreciate his superiority, either, "You may think you're above me... You should know that I'm womanly wise... Don't try to debate me."

Another thing she is unaware of is that they are more than friends, or are soon to be. Our speaker is not going to let the fact of their friendship prevent him from trying to increase their status a notch, and is willing to risk losing her as a friend to gain her as a girlfriend.

A bold ploy, and a necessary one in many cases. But first, he says something cruel: "You're just a game that I like to play." What, then, is the point of risking the friendship? Not to gain a lover, but to win a "game"?

He says that she dare not "try to manipulate" him, but what would he like to do to her if not the exact same thing?

Musically, the song mimics many of the British Invasion songs of the time; played instrumentally (and, minus the bent blues notes), it might be mistaken for an early Police track, with its somewhat-reggae beat.

At this point, however, the song turns into an electric-piano lounge number for a few measures. Someone-- either a friend or a voice from his subconscious-- tells the speaker that his tactics will fail: "Obviously, you're going to blow it."

This wiser voice takes the idea of "you don't know" and turns it back on the speaker. His oncoming failure may be obvious to this detached observer, but "you [i.e., the speaker] don't know it."

So here is the speaker, bragging about his intellect and what his target doesn't "know," when it's obvious to everyone else that this person doesn't "know," ahem, squat about relationships or how to start them.

The beat picks back up, and our dogged if maladroit speaker continues his bluster unabated. Obviously, he is going to blow it.

For her part, she probably is well aware that her interest lies elsewhere.

IMPACT: The song was covered by a singer named Dana Valery in 1977. She was born in Italy, but moved to South Africa at 16, where she broke into music. 


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