"If I Don't Get You The Next One Will" is a song written, recorded and produced by Lynsey de Paul and released in 1976 in the UK as her last single on Jet Records. A longer version of the song was recorded as a track for the 1976 album Take Your Time, but the album was shelved as part of a dispute been de Paul and Arden, and when it was finally released in 1990 as "Before You Go Tonight", the single version was included. This humorous and tongue in cheek song relates many of de Paul's negative dating experiences (sample lyric "I’ve been dated and waited until I was blue, I’ve been cheated, mistreated and broken in two, I've been lied to, denied to, till I've had my fill, so, if I don’t get you, well, the next one will"). The song was inspired in part from experiences with former boyfriend, Ringo Starr, who missed a dinner date with de Paul. She performed this song on TV shows such as The Arrows on 18 May 1976. It most recently appeared on the compilation double album, Into My Music, but it has also been included on her Greatest Hits and Best of the 70s CD albums.
It also became the title of a chapter in the book and audiobook, Ringo Starr: Straight Man or Joker, by the writer Adam Clayson, which related this and other amusing stories about de Paul and Starr's time together.