Day After Day #342: The Only One I Know

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

The Only One I Know (1990)

By 1990, MTV was still primarily known for playing music videos. The Real World wouldn't debut for two more years, and after that, reality TV began to gradually take over the network. But in '90, you could still watch videos on MTV pretty much around the clock, although like radio, the station was heavily formatted and played a tight rotation of the same songs repeatedly. 

I was still watching a lot of MTV in 1990, but I was more interested in the specialty shows that would air late at night. Specifically, I would make sure to tune in to 120 Minutes on Sunday nights to see the latest alternative rock videos; often, you could see videos for songs that weren't being played on the radio yet. 

In addition to American bands that I was pretty familiar with, I liked to see what was coming out of the U.K. Bands like Ride, the Stone Roses and the House of Love were doing some interesting stuff, as was a band called the Charlatans. Retro sounds were popular on both sides of the pond; the burgeoning Madchester scene was embracing soul and R&B from the '60s and '70s and when you listen to the Charlatans' breakout single "The Only One I Know," you can definitely hear those influences.

The Charlatans were formed in Birmingham in 1988 by bassist Martin Blunt, who brought in Rob Collins (keyboards), Jon Brookes (drums), Jon Day (guitar) and Baz Ketley (vocals). After Ketley left, he was replaced by Tim Burgess, who had played in a band called the Electric Crayons. Right from the start, the band was heavily influenced by '60s soul and garage music, including the Spencer Davis Group, Stax Records acts and the Doors, as well as more recent bands like the Stranglers and Joy Division.

The band's first single, "Indian Rope," was an indie hit, which led the Charlatans to sign with the Beggars Banquet offshoot Situation Two just before the release of their next single, "The Only One I Know." The song featured a combination of nods to their influences: a few lines taken from the Byrds' song "Everybody's Been Burned," an organ riff from Deep Purple's 1968 cover of "Hush," a guitar part from the Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On."

The lyrics themselves were written by Burgess about a teenager wondering why their feelings towards someone else aren't reciprocated.

"The only one I know/Has come to take me away/The only one I know/Is mine when she stitches me/The only one I see/Has found an aching in me/The only one I see/Has turned her tongue into me/Everyone has been burned before/Everybody knows the pain."

The song was released on the band's 1990 debut Some Friendly. It hit #9 on the U.K. Singles Chart and #5 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. The album went to #1 in the U.K. and #73 in the U.S.

"The only one I know/Never cries, never opens her eyes/The only one I know/Wide awake and then she's away/The only one I see/Is mine when she walks down our street/The only one I see/Has carved her way into me."

The Charlatans had originally planned to release "Polar Bear" as their second single but were talked out of it by their label and others who recommended "The Only One I Know" instead. The song's sweeping groove was led by the organ, which despite the retro vibe, made it sound very different from pretty much everything else coming out at the time. 

Much like fellow up-and-comers Nirvana and Dinosaur Jr., the Charlatans were challenged by another band from the 1960s with the same name. Nirvana ended up settling out of court with a British band from the '60s called Nirvana. Dinosaur Jr. started out in 1985 as Dinosaur and released two albums before they faced a legal challenge from a band called Dinosaurs that featured former members of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother and the Holding Company; they added the "Jr." to their name, while Dinosaurs split up in the late '80s. And the Charlatans became known as Charlatans UK in the U.S. after a '60s act called the Charlatans laid claim to the name.

Along with the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, the Charlatans became a key part of the Madchester and baggy (aka trippy dance music) scenes in the U.K. in the early '90s. Baker left in 1991 and was replaced by Mark Collins on guitar. Their next album, 1992's Between 10th and 11th, didn't reach the U.K. top 20, but the lead single "Weirdo" was a hit. Later that year, Collins was charged with armed robbery after a friend robbed a store while he waited in a car outside; he claimed he didn't know about the robbery until after it happened and pleaded to a lesser charge, serving four months in prison as a result.

The next two Charlatans albums were successful in the U.K., hitting #8 and #1, respectively. The band was working on its fifth album in 1996 when Collins was killed in a traffic accident. They decided to keep going and added Primal Scream keyboardist Martin Duffy to fill in. The band has continued on, releasing nine albums since 1997 and touring regularly. Brookes died in 2013 at the age of 44 from a brain tumor; Peter Salisbury has served as the band's touring drummer since 2010.