Dickermann and Mann had originally intended for the video to be shot "down south" with a "spring feeling" but owing to the 1993 Storm of the Century, which resulted in heavy snowfall, it was filmed near Ithaca instead.

"[6] In a review of Whatever, Mark Caro of the Chicago Tribune described "I Should've Known" as the best of the album's "upbeat songs" and a "crunching guitar stomp freshened by a breeze of background vocals.

"[7] Chuck Campbell of the Scripps Howard News Service considered it a "liberating song" which is "so well crafted with its thoroughly ingratiating hook, sumptuous backing vocals and intriguing decorations that listeners will be hard pressed to let the album advance to the second track".

There's a bit of the Kinks via Chrissie Hynde in Mann's vocal, and the coda is shot through with the riff from George Harrison's 'Something' kinda sideways and upside down.

He considered it "the fattest, most thunderous pop record of this or any other recent week", but also believed there is "more intelligence in a Linus manifesto than this happy, little rip-off" of Bob Dylan's 1973 song "Knockin' on Heaven's Door".