Each Friday I pick a song–new, old, borrowed, blue–that’s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.
This is “I’m not in Love” by 10cc:
10cc is basically a pretty silly band (go listen to “Dreadlock Holiday” or “I Wanna Rule the World” if you don’t believe me) with a pretty impressive set of chops and pretty good songwriting credentials (here’s Graham Gouldman’s credits, for a start). “I’m not in Love” isn’t particularly silly, but it is particularly great. Okay, the lyrics are pretty silly, but only if you’re supposed to be taking all this pathos without a spoonful of irony–and if you haven’t taken that spoonful by the halfway mark, the lady who chimes in and tells you, “Big boys don’t cry” should slap some of the po- from your face. What makes this song great is the way the beautiful–totally, unmitigatedly beautiful–tape loops of voices (256 voices, according to this excellent “making of” discussion), guitar and electric piano parts offset the irony and create four minutes of pop music that are intelligent, complex, fun and beautiful; that’s a rare quartet of things.
