The team of Stock, Aitken & Waterman came up with this when Peter Waterman was telling Mike Stock that Kylie had stopped going out with her Neighbours co-star Jason Donovan. Instead she was seeing INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence. He then commented how it was better the devil you know as they feared their lives were going to be hell as a consequence.
In an interview with the UK magazine Songwriting, Waterman explained the benefit of a tight deadline. "The best songs we ever wrote were written literally when somebody said, 'We've just had a call from Kylie, she's on her way in and trying to avoid the paparazzi, so you've got a two-hour wait.' And we thought, 's--t, we haven't even got a song yet!' But somebody said, 'Better the devil you know' and we all went, 'That's the song.' Bang! In one hour the song was written and in three hours it was recorded. It was just a great title and it tells you what the story is."
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