18 Days To Dudes: "Didn't I Warn You"

I love the great male/female duets of the 70’s and 80’s: Stevie and Tom, Linda and Don, Mike and Anne, etc. “Didn’t I Warn You” started off as a pretty passive/aggressive first person kiss-off that became a lot more digestible when re-imagined as a stilted conversation between two people incapable of communicating with each other.

Once the concept came into focus, Adam Schlesinger and I began looking for the right singing partner. We wanted to find a female artist that had serious chops but was not really known yet. My booking agent, Marty Diamond, sent over a few discs of his artists to help us out. After a few listens, the choice was clearly between Nelly Furtado and Shannon McNally. Although she was cute as a button and probably on a faster upward trajectory (I remember hearing “I Am Like A Bird” and thinking it sounded like a hit), Nelly’s voice didn’t seem to possess the requisite smoky worldliness that Shannon’s did. Luckily, Shannon had not begun touring yet and was still living on Long Island. She came to TMF studios on 12th St. one night and put her vocal down pretty quickly. I found her so unbearably sexy that I could barely be in the same room with her.

What if Nelly Furtado had sung the song instead? Her career took off like a rocket about the time that the marketing campaign for Mine and Yours was coming to an abrupt halt. I can only imagine how RCA might have reacted, possibly grabbing “Didn’t I Warn You” off whatever shelf on which it was sitting and throwing it out into the world on a wing and a prayer. Or not.

I prefer to remember the way Shannon McNally smelled while I stood beside her at the microphone: Almonds and vanilla, with a trace of honey.