I'm Not In Love

Album

Original Soundtrack

Label

Mercury Records

Genre

Art pop

Composer(s)

Graham Gouldman;Eric Stewart

Entered Chart

May 17, 1975

Peak Date

Jul 26, 1975

Released

May 1975

Recorded

1974–1975

Catalog #

Mercury 73678

B-Side

Channel Swimmer

This song incorporated the backing of a large wordless choir, which in reality was the group's voices. It 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 vocal. The idea for the song came from Eric Stewart saying to his wife that if he kept saying "I Love You" over and over, it wouldn't mean anything even though he did love her. He recalled to The Guardian: "I met this gorgeous girl called Gloria at Halifax town hall. I was 18. She was 16. Three years later, we got married. A few years after that, Gloria told me: 'You don't say 'I love you' much anymore.' I told her that, if I said it all the time, it would sound glib. But I started wondering how I could say it without using those actual words. So 'I'm not in love' became a rhetorical conversation with myself – and then a song. I wrote the lyrics in a couple of days. The line, 'I keep your picture up on the wall, it hides a nasty stain' was about the crack in my bedroom wall at my parents' house in Manchester. I'd put a photograph of Gloria over it. When I took the song to the band, they said: 'I'm not in love'? What the f--k is that? You can't say that!' But Graham Gouldman, our bass-player and chord-master, agreed to work on it with me. We both liked The Girl From Ipanema, so we gave it a similar bossa nova style. Then Kevin Godley, our drummer, said it was crap. We were about to scrap it and wipe the tape but, as I walked around the studio, I heard the secretary singing it and the window-cleaner whistling it. I knew we had a tune: we just hadn't captured it properly. Kevin suggested doing it again, but with banks of voices. I thought that meant hiring a choir, but Lol Creme, our keyboard player, said we could do it using tape loops." The guy in this song sounds like he's trying to convince himself he's not in love anymore, but he's not fooling us. That conflict stems from the title and helped make the song so poignant. In a Songfacts interview with Graham Gouldman, he explained: "I had the opening chords to it and it grew from there. 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 vocals of "Be quiet, big boys don't cry" came from the secretary of Strawberry Studios (the studio the band operated), Kathy Redfern. They were looking for a certain sound when Redfern entered the studio to quietly tell Eric Stewart he had a phone call. When they heard her voice, they knew it was right for the song. The four members of 10cc had been on the British music scene for a while when they formed. Vocalist/guitarist Graham Gouldman was a former member of the Mockingbirds and had written hits for Jeff Beck, the Yardbirds, the Hollies and Herman's Hermits. Singer/guitarist Eric Stewart was a former member of Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, and vocalists/multi-instrumentalists Lol Creme and Kevin Godley were both highly regarded studio musicians. Stewart, Creme and Godley grouped in 1970 as a session band known as Hotlegs; they had a surprise hit with "Neanderthal Man" that came about when dallying with equipment. With Gouldman on board, they signed to pop mogul Jonathan King's UK label in 1972 and recorded 11 UK Top 10 hits, including two other #1s: "Rubber Bullets " in 1973 and "Dreadlock Holiday" in 1978. Creme and Godley left the band by the time "Dreadlock Holiday" was recorded to concentrate on video production as well as developing the Gizmo, a guitar modification device they invented. They had one other US Top Ten hit in 1977, "The Things We Do For Love," which reached #5. Report this ad According to Kevin Godley, they originally recorded this song as a "lounge-lizard, bossa-nova thing," which clearly didn't work. When they revisited it, they came up with a new approach. "It was possibly out of desperation of not knowing what to do that we tried all the washy voices," Godley said in a Songfacts interview. "Forget instruments, forget guitars, forget drums. Just voices, like a heavenly choir, like a tsunami of voices." Godley says they spent days singing notes into a microphone, which they then turned into tape loops. These loops were loaded onto 16 different tape machines and rolled simultaneously. In the control room, each band member had four faders to bring each loop in and out of the mix on the fly, which they overdubbed onto the basic track they had built with electric piano, guitar and a Moog synthesizer set to simulate a bass drum. Said Godley: "We used Eric's original guide vocal in the end because it just worked, and from that point onwards, everything we added or took away or changed from that point worked. There were no head-scratching moments, no arguing, no disagreements, no problems. It was like we were in a magic bubble and everything fell into place. Then we mixed it, and it was six-and-a-half minutes long - something crazy - and we realized we had done something special. We didn't know it was a hit record or anything, but we knew it was special." In 1990, the duo Will To Power released a cover version that went to #7 US. Two years earlier, Will To Power had a #1 US hit with a medley of two cover songs: Peter Frampton's "Baby, I Love Your Way" and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird." Other popular covers include a 1976 version by Richie Havens that made #102 in the US, and a 1993 version by The Pretenders recorded for the movie Indecent Proposal - this one was produced by Trevor Horn. Movies that have used this song include: The Stud (1978) The Virgin Suicides (1999) Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999) Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) He's Just Not That Into You (2009) Among the TV series to use it are: Bull ("How To Dodge A Bullet") - 2017 EastEnders - 2013 Veronica Mars ("Hi, Infidelity" - 2006) Medium ("To Have And To Hold" - 2008) Big Love ("Dating Game" - 2007) The Office ("Judgement" - 2001) That '70s Show ("Prom Night" - 1999) This song opens the 2014 movie Guardians of the Galaxy, where Chris Pratt's character is listening to it on a Walkman. The song is part of a mixtape his dying mother gave him called Awesome Mix Vol. 1, which plays a huge part in the film and also forms the soundtrack, reviving many hits from the '70s. "I'm Not In Love" and other selections ("Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" and "Hooked On A Feeling" among them) are incongruent choices for a superhero action movie, but they proved very effective, as the soundtrack went to #1 in America. Director Bruce Gowers made a video for this song showing the band performing it in the studio. A few years later, Godley & Creme made many elaborate concept videos for the likes of The Police, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and George Harrison. In 2019, Godley shot a new video for "I'm Not In Love" that was used as a concert visual in Graham Gouldman's touring version of 10cc. When the New York City alt-rock band Fun Lovin' Criminals re-released their hit "Scooby Snacks" in 1997, they paired it with a cover of this tune. The double-A side single went to #12 in the UK.

I'm not in love
So don't forget it
It's just a silly phase I'm going through
And just because
I call you up
Don't get me wrong, don't think you've got it made

I'm not in love, no no, it's because

I like to see you
But then again
That doesn't mean you mean that much to me
So if I call you
Don't make a fuss
Don't tell your friends about the two of us

I'm not in love, no no, it's because

Be quiet, big boys don't cry
Big boys don't cry
Big boys don't cry
Big boys don't cry
Big boys don't cry
Big boys don't cry
Big boys don't cry

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

I'm not in love, no no, it's because

Ooh, you'll wait a long time for me
Ooh, you'll wait a long time
Ooh, you'll wait a long time for me
Ooh, you'll wait a long time

I'm not in love
So don't forget it
It's just a silly phase I'm going through
And just because I call you up
Don't get me wrong, don't think you've got it made, ooh

I'm not in love
I'm not in love