1975 10cc: I'm Not In Love

Probably their most famous song, 10cc's 'I'm Not In Love' is a faux anti-love love song that presents denial as a barometer of genuine emotional feeling; in other words, another clever dick song from a clever dick band. But this time, the duality of the lyric hides a deeper, chillier secret that provides 'I'm Not In Love' with a more disturbing and rewarding depth beyond the point where you think you've 'got it'.

But before we go there, a word on the music; if there's one thing that 10cc knew, it was their way around a studio and 'I'm Not In Love' washes along on a lush wave of massed choral overdubs. Too forceful for ambience but lacking any discernible melody, the sleeping gas of the music sounds as dreamily wondrous and as unlikely a backing for a number one today as it did in 1975.

The tune proper is carried by Eric Stewart's vocal that breaks free of the pack to deliver its subverted lyric of love/anti love: "I'm not in love, so don't forget it. It's just a silly phase I'm going through". In many ways it's the flip side of REM's later 'The One I Love' where Stipe compares a relationship he's in to 'a simple crutch to occupy my time', but on 'I'm Not In Love' Stewart isn't even prepared to admit that level of need. Cold enough by itself, but then it goes on......

"I keep your picture upon the wall. It hides a nasty stain just lying there". "

Nasty stain" is a bit of a howler in this world of earthrealy beauty and it's clunkiness spoiled the song for me in my youth. Ah, but experience came along and taught me that it's there for a purpose, that it's meant to be clunky. Because while this is something you may well say to your partner in teasing, when sang in the earnestly self conscious style of 'I'm Not In Love', all playfulness gets sucked out of the room until what remains is as unpleasant and nasty as the stain itself.

And that, along with the recurring "Oh you'll wait a long time for me" is, I think, the key to 'I'm Not In Love'. Stewart is not simply trying to convince his would be lover that there is no spark between them, he's also acknowledging his own inability to let anyone in, making the song not so much 'I'm Not In Love' as 'I'm Incapable Of Loving Anyone Ever'. The killer comes with the realisation that the inability to share emotion doesn't negate the ability to feel it, and the motherly whisper of 'Be quiet, big boys don't cry' on the middle eight suddenly makes the massed backing sound as cold as a winter fog.

I know people who have fallen in love to 'I'm Not In Love' and slowdanced to at their weddings, but there's no shame in being hoodwinked by master magicians who managed to produce six minutes of crippled emotion and pass it off as the real thing. And in the middle of summer too. Now how clever dick is that?