THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.

154-10cc-I’m Not in Love.

1975-Number 1 single.

Best Bit-At 5.17. Band member Kevin Godley said,’Forget instruments, forget guitars, forget drums. Just voices, like a heavenly choir, like a tsunami of voices.’

10cc (see also best songs 663) were formed in Stockport, England, in 1972 by Graham Gouldman, (lead vocals, and bass) Eric Stuart, (lead vocals, and guitars) Lol Creme, (keyboards) and Kevin Godley, (drums) this classic line up remained in place until 1975 when Godley and Creme left, stating musical differences as the cause for the split. As boys Godley and Creme had grown up together in the Manchester area, and Godley later attended secondary school with Gouldman. The three first met Eric Stewart when Graham Gouldman invested money into a recording studio that Stewart already partly owned and recorded at, this studio in Stockport would become known as ‘Strawberry Studios,’ taking it’s name from the Beatles song ‘Strawberry Fields Forever.’

‘I’m Not in Love’ was the second single released from 10cc’s third studio Album ‘The Original Soundtrack’ from March 1975. The song was co-written by Eric Stuart and Graham Gouldman, with all four band members receiving the production credits. The song originally started out life as a ‘Bossa Nova’ melody played on guitars, but after Godley and Creme both hated it, the song was discarded until the band members heard some of the studio staff humming the melody, and they then realised they could be on to a winner if the song was radically altered.

It was Kevin Godley who suggested the unique idea of recording the song with a large wordless choir, which in fact are the voices of all four band members. In the recording studio the song was painstakingly built up from chord loops, and multi tracks, some 256 vocal dubs were required to complete the lush harmonies behind Eric Stewart’s lead vocals.

Eric Stuart got the idea for the song after his wife of then eight years said to him,’You don’t say I love you much anymore,’ to which Stewart replied,’If I said it all the time it would sound glib.’ Stewart then wondered how he could say ‘I love you’ without actually using those words, so ‘I’m Not in Love’ became a rhetorical conversation with himself, and then a song. Graham Gouldman has added,’Eric and I had always avoided a love song, but I was always convinced we could do a great one, and once again Eric came up with the title of that song, and it was the perfect title of an anti-love song. But of course, is it an anti-love song? Is it I’m not in love, or is it, I am in love?’

The whispered female vocals ‘Be quiet, big boys don’t cry’ were provided by the studio secretary Kathy Redfern. The band had been looking for a certain sound when Redfern entered the studio to quietly tell Stuart that he had a phone call. When he heard her voice he knew that it was right for the song. Those whispered lyrics became the inspiration for the English Pop band ‘Boys Don’t Cry,’ who reached Number 12 on Billboard, and Number 4 in Australia in 1985 with their only hit single ‘I Wanna Be a Cowboy.’

‘I keep your picture upon the wall, it hides a nasty stain that’s lying there. So don’t you ask me to give it back, I know you know it doesn’t mean that much to me.’