"I'm Not in Love," by 10cc

There’s a fascinating BBC radio documentary on the making of 10cc’s “I’m Not in Love,” one of my favorite songs from the 70s. I’d always known the song was haunting and maybe a little otherworldly creepy, but the doc makes it clear why. The instrumental bed for the most part was human voices, each note on a different track, and the engineer played “chords” by bringing the right vocal notes up on the faders.

There’s even a bit about how the studio’s secretary provided the whispered “Be quiet - big boys don’t cry” part.

Boing Boing has a post about it, including an embedded Youtube video of the doc.

Interesting stuff (to me, at least).

Ooh, supercool, Jerri. How strange hearing it unraveled. And what a weird alternate version:

Don’t feel let down.
Don’t get hung up.
We do what we can.
Do what we must.

By the way, Sofia Coppola made excellent use of “I’m Not in Love” in Virgin Suicides.

 -Tom

Yeah, I don’t know if it’s because I’m used to the version as it was released or because that vocal part really sucks, but I’m glad they left it out.

And this little documentary also provides a lesson for all those artists who have made sucky covers of that song: You shouldn’t have even tried.

If you enjoy good acapella, and aren’t put off by Bjork, you might want to take a look at Bjork’s album, Medulla. (sample song)

I’ve always felt much the same about the haunting qualities of acapella music, and not the barbershop variety (which I’ve always found much more fun to perform than listen to). There’s something about the vocal gymnastics performed by the singers when trying to mimic musical instruments, or when they are creating certain types of walls of sound that raises my hackles in a weird way I can only associate with some sort of primal programming buried deep in my psyche, much like how the typical human response to nails on a chalkboard is though to be a remnant of our fight or flight reflex kicking on when we were all monkeys screaming at each other when danger was near.

Unlike nails on a chalkboard, there are simply certain types of vocal performances that can affect me in a weird, but good way. The song you linked is a good example of '‘haunting, because I get the idea that there’s a part of my subconscious brain that recognizes them as voices, without my conscious brain being aware of what it is it’s hearing. It’s almost like the reverse of how the brain is known to try to make sense out of chaos, like seeing faces in clouds and such. Instead of seeing things that aren’t there, we’re hearing things that are, but we’re not understanding what we’;re hearing on any conscious level.

I dig crazy vocal crap. Music production has come a long way, especially with electronic programming, certain types of vox, and auto-tuners, but there’s something to be said when these tools are being used to reorganize the vocals, rather than blatantly manipulate them. Back before all this electronic crap there were the Andrews Sisters mimicking trumpets with their close harmony style. By today’s standard pretty much everything they’ve done sounds antiquated and folksy, but they’ve always sounded strangely spooky to me.

Are you aware of the Dutch a capella group Van Canto?

Wishmaster

Kings of Metal

Fear of the Dark

There are also some a capella workshop videos on their youtube channel.

God I love this song. I remember when it came out. At that time, it was kind of embarrassing to like it. I mean–this is not Led Zeppelin. But I always remembered how haunting it felt, even back then, coupled with the bitter irony of the lyrics, so when the iPod came out and I had the advantage of anonymous digital music purchases, this was one of the very first songs I bought. :) Now of course I realize there’s nothing embarrassing about it. It’s beautiful.

Thanks for the link, Jerri!

Jeff, I realized to my horror last night that I didn’t own the song, so I snarfed it up from Itunes right after listening to the doc the second time. :)

There’s a really detailed article about the song here: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun05/articles/classictracks.htm

10cc were a very interesting, I guess you’d have to say brilliant but ultimately failed concept. I find their albums rather fascinating, but not necessarily enjoyable. Listening to them is like watching a trainwreck; just one brilliant idea after another chased down a cul-de-sac and then abandoned for something else.

…and then despite all that, they come up with “I’m Not In Love” and “Things We Do For Love”, two utterly amazing songs that sound as if Godley and Creme hated completely.

Oh, and the original blog post that started the subject of this thread?

That was written by a fellow named Brad Laner, who happens to be one of my favorite music auteur/heroes.

Here’s Brad’s original band (you may remember them from keg parties where some very cool art school chick would put “The Crow” soundtrack on while you made out): this song is not a Medicine song from “The Crow” soundtrack, but it is one of the most amazingly cool, unknown rock songs from the past 20 years. (Don’t worry, the vocals and first verse kick in after the first 3 minutes or so, and are totally worth waiting for.)

Brad also does a lot of vocal and guitar experimenting, I think more successfully than 10cc, on his own, as seen here.

This is indeed a great song. To be fair though, if the secretary that gave them inspiration to finish it had asked me to do the same, I do believe I would have tried my heart out.

That is so cool, thanks for that.