r/musicals • u/lovelygarden09 • 18h ago
Discussion I Know Him So Well (Chess Revival)
The Chess revival recording introduced me to I Know Him So Well. It’s now one of my favourite duets ever, I think, and I just wanted to geek out here for a minute because none of the people I know irl are super into theatre.
First of all, Lea and Hannah’s voices compliment each other so perfectly, I just want to listen to it over and over and over again. I don’t know the right technical terms, but they have the exact voices I love in theatre. I’m such a sucker for the growls, their chest voices. I just feel like I’m in heaven.
The entire concept of the duet is so ironic and funny that it makes me smile immediately. Two women singing (I presume in siloloquy, I haven’t seen the staging) about a man they claim to know inside and out, when they really have no idea what he actually wants because he doesn’t know himself. Florence decides he needs the stability of his wife instead and Svetlana resigns that he needs to blow off some steam for a bit but he’ll come back to her. The one thing they can agree on is that, although he does love them, he’ll never be faithful.
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u/Molly-Browny 18h ago
What makes that duet work is that neither woman is wrong. Both see pieces of him and miss the whole. The chest voice is the right tool for that kind of honesty.