“I Told You So”
Song by Ray Charles
Ray Charles’ 1969 album Doing His Thing ends with “I Told You So”, a mid-tempo Jimmy Lewis song that has the weary, bookend quality appropriate for an album closer. After all that has gone on during the previous nine songs, it’s come to this.
With Lewis’ chirpy guitar adding sharp, distinctive notes her and there, and (most of all) a group of Raelets at their gospel best, Ray gets to deliver an impassioned sermon over four slowly-unfolding minutes, verse after verse offering a pitying but essentially self-satisfied rebuke to a former lover who has come crawling back after the man she left Ray for subsequently left her:
I hate to be the one to say, “I told you so”
But I told you so
Instrumentally, things are kept basic on “I Told You So”: low-key drums, bass, and piano keep the song moving but remain unfussy, while the lead guitar gets to act as the foil to Ray’s vocals; only later does a barely noticeable orchestra swell in to the bottom reaches of the song to give it an extra color.
Brother Ray’s voice is what you’d expect: soulful, angry, proud, and at times regretful. Sighing with emotion and scandalized by her foolishness for not heeding his warnings and by her audacity in coming back now, Ray gets into this song like nobody else could have. In one particularly withering line, he sings:
I found somebody who loves me
The way that I used to love you
Ouch! One suspects that Jimmy Lewis may not be “hating” telling her off as much as he claims to be.
“I Told You So” is structured around a very simple chord pattern that goes around and around, offering no real surprises but taut with dramatic tension thanks in no small part to the song’s measured, deliberate pace. Just a simple skeleton on which Ray can hang the meat of his message.
Listen to “I Told You So”
Songs on Doing His Thing