I Do' Wanna Know

Album: Wheels Are Turnin' (1984)
Charted: 29
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Songfacts®:

  • Written by lead singer Kevin Cronin, this rollicking rocker finds him telling his girl that he doesn't want to know how much she loves and cares for him - perhaps because he won't like the answer.
  • Released as the first single from the Wheels Are Turnin' album, the song stalled at #29 US in December 1984. The next single was far more successful: "Can't Fight This Feeling" went to #1 in March 1985.
  • The video is by far the most elaborate that REO Speedwagon made. The colorful, absurd clip shows the band dressed like women while an unhinged bloke in neon suspenders wreaks havoc. He ends up meeting a gender-true version of the band dressed as softball-playing angels, who put him in a phone booth that takes him to hell.

    The director, Kevin Dole, had the starring role. "That video smokes anything else that we ever did," Kevin Cronin said in a Songfacts interview. "We worked hard on that video. A lot of time in make-up, different locations - those pixelated scenes take a long time to film. In those days, you had to do it analog. You had to literally take a step, stop, take another step, stop, and then he would speed up the film. Things that people can do on their phones now were very difficult to do back in those days."

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