Normal service is resumed on top of the charts. Sort of.

I Don’t Wanna Know, by Mario Winans (his 1^st and only #1) ft. Enya (her 2^nd and final #1) & P. Diddy (his 2^nd of three #1s)

2 weeks, 6^th – 20^th June 2004

At least this isn’t a bitch-fest, with Mario Winans listing the ways his ex-lover has wronged him, cheated on him, done the dirty… In fact, the crux of the song is that ignorance is bliss: I don’t wanna know, If you’re playing me, Keep it on the low, Cause my heart can’t take it anymore… But it’s still a mopey break-up song, in a year that has already seen its fair share of mopey break-up songs. Forget ‘I Don’t Wanna Know’; make that ‘We Don’t Wanna Know’, Mario. Just keep it to yourself.

What makes this track actually quite interesting is the sample from Enya’s eerie ‘Boadicea’, which gives it a real obsessing-in-the-middle-of-the-night atmosphere. Winan’s knew the sample from the Fugees’ 1996 #1 ‘Ready Or Not’, but unlike on that track Enya actually agreed to re-record the sample, receiving a credit and a second chart-topper, sixteen years on from ‘Orinoco Flow’.

Listening now, I wonder how this record would have sounded if they had just stuck with the ‘Boadicea’ sample, and the piano line that enters later? Instead a fairly basic, jittery hip-hop beat comes in, and spoils the desolate feeling. I suppose it might have sounded too similar to ‘Ready or Not’ otherwise, but still. The middle-eight picks things up a bit, as Winans harmonises nicely with himself, but much of is bland and mushy.

I also wonder how this would have sounded without P. Diddy’s rap. Not just because he’s now persona non grata, but because it’s such a non-event. I guess, like the hip-hop beat, they asked him to phone it in and stuck it on because it was the done thing for an R&B track in the mid-‘00s, and because he was a name and Mario Winans wasn’t, rather than because it adds much to the song. Still, it is Sean Combes’ second of three UK #1s, all coming under different pseudonyms.

For Mario Winans, this was his only UK Top 10 as a lead artist. He is more prolific as a producer and songwriter, having worked with Destiny’s Child, Jennifer Lopez and The Weeknd, among various others. He is also the nephew of Bebe Winans, who guested on Eternal’s 1997 chart-topper ‘I Wanna Be the Only One’, and part of the extended (and apparently quite important in the gospel music world) Winans Family.

One other thing to note before we finish is that like the gruesome twosome he knocked off number one, ‘I Don’t Wanna Know’ inspired its own answer song. ‘You Should Really Know’ by the Pirates ft. Shola Ama, Naila Boss and Ishani (and Enya, of course) is actually quite good, with an interesting Indian flavour to it, and made #8 later in the year.