Few pop songs sound as dreamlike as “I’m Not in Love,” and Ultimate Classic Rock has noticed. The outlet ranks 10cc’s 1975 single at No. 13 on its list of the best soft rock songs, according to a rundown of its top 15.
The song was written by band members Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman and appeared on the album The Original Soundtrack. It hit No. 1 in the U.K. and climbed to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1975.
It almost never made the record. Stewart wrote it after telling his wife that saying “I love you” over and over would make the words lose their meaning. The band first tried it as a bossa nova number, then dropped it. Stewart revived it after noticing that staff at the band’s Strawberry Studios in Stockport were humming the melody.
The sound that defines the song came from a workaround. The band wanted a choir but didn’t hire one. Lol Creme suggested tape loops instead. Songfacts says about 256 vocal tracks went into the finished harmonies. Stewart built loops roughly 12 feet long, running them around the studio and tensioning them with a roller on a microphone stand. He then played them through separate channels of the mixing desk, effectively “playing” the choir by moving the faders.
Gouldman told The Guardian in 2025 that the band would turn the lights out in the control room and listen back, and “we knew that song was great.”
The most famous moment in the song came by accident. While the band was working, studio secretary Kathy Redfern opened the control room door and whispered to Stewart that he had a phone call. Creme jumped up, saying that was the voice they needed. She was coaxed into recording the whispered line “Be quiet, big boys don’t cry.”
The song went on to become 10cc’s biggest hit.