You Don't Know Me

Album: Disco 1999 (1999)
Charted: 1
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Songfacts®:

  • This song features on vocals Duane Harden, who first met Armand Van Helden in a New York club where Van Helden used to DJ. Van Helden's first success in the UK was re-mixing "Sugar Is Sweeter" for C.J. Bolland. He then re-mixed "Professional Widow" for Tori Amos, which was a UK chart topper. Van Helden pioneered a new genre, Speed Garage, by mixing the deep basslines of jungle music with house music.
  • Also in 1999, Duane Harden sang on Powerhouse's "What You Need," A Top 20 single on the Pop charts in Australia, Canada and the UK. In 2000 Harden climbed to #19 in the UK with the hit "Sunshine (Dance With You')," a track credited to Infinity featuring Duane Harden.
  • In 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, Armand Van Helden explained, "You Don't Know Me was a perfect example of putting two simple things together, the beats from Jaydee's Plastic Dreams and a disco loop from Carrie Lucas. The vocalist will hear a few and pick a track and that's what happened with Duane."

    Armand Van Helden goes on to say in the same book, "He (Duane) had never recorded or written a song before and my only direction to him was that he could not write a song about love or an uplifting spirit or whatever all of the garage songs were singing about at the time. I think he wrote it overnight and came over to record it. I basically told him to sing the song 15 times or so and put him on record for one hour, meanwhile, I went to my bedroom. The whole thing seemed very unforced and natural."

    "Later, Duane told me that he wrote the song, thinking of how people used to judge me without even knowing me when we lived in Boston, which, by the way, was how he felt before he met me."

Comments: 1

  • Paul Marlo from Perthone of the better songs from that year!
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