Tom Jones Didn’t Have the Heart to Ask for a Songwriting Credit on This Hit Single From 1994

In 1994, Tom Jones released “If I Only Knew”. The song, part of his The Lead And How To Swing It album, reached the Top 5 on Billboard’s Dance chart, making it his final Top 10 hit. By 1994, Jones already had three decades’ worth of this, beginning with “It’s Not Unusual”, out in 1965.  After “It’s Not Unusual”, Jones released hit singles like “What’s New Pussycat?”, “Green, Green Grass Of Home”, “Delilah”, and others.

The songwriting credit for “If I Only Knew” goes to Rise Robots Rise, a hip-hop group from the early 1990s. “If I Only Knew” was first recorded by Rise Robots Rise. But surprisingly, Jones later reveals that he actually contributed to writing “If I Only Knew”, even though he didn’t take any writing credit for the song.

Part of the chorus of “If I Only Knew” says, “If I only knew / What I could do / To make you make you love me, to make you make you love me / Up north where the snow grows colder / I travel onward ‘cross the border.” 

The Story Behind “If I Only Knew” by Tom Jones

Jones was performing with another rock icon when “If I Only Knew” began to take shape.

“I did a charity performance with Sting for his Rainforest Foundation in Carnegie Hall,” Jones remembers. “The night was very successful, and everybody thought it went well. Jimmy Iovine, a music producer and label boss, called. He had apparently heard about my performance, and soon I was signed to Interscope Records.”

“Jimmy knew about ‘If I Only Knew’, which was by a new group called Rise Robots Rise,” Jones continues. “They were obscure then, and I think they still are. Nice bunch of fellas, though. They were a white rap group, but it was the big brass riff in there that Jimmy loved and we wanted to make more of a song of it.”

The Rise Robots Rise version was indeed a rap, without a melody, which is what Jones’s producer, Trevor Horn, knew Jones would need.

“[Horn] offered to get Lol Creme (from 10cc) to write it, but I said that I could do it,  and that melody just shot out of my head,” Jones recounts. “I should have had a writing credit, but I didn’t because this group was struggling, and I didn’t have the heart to say that I wanted part of the royalties.”

Rise Robots Rise released three full-length albums and four EPs. Their last project, Circular File, came out in 1994.

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