I'm Not in Love

Writing and composition

Stewart came up with the idea for the song after his wife, to whom he had been married for eight years at that point, asked him why he didn't say "I love you" more often to her. Stewart said, "I had this crazy idea in my mind that repeating those words would somehow degrade the meaning, so I told her, 'Well, if I say every day "I love you, darling, I love you, blah, blah, blah", it's not gonna mean anything eventually'. That statement led me to try to figure out another way of saying it, and the result was that I chose to say 'I'm not in love with you', while subtly giving all the reasons throughout the song why I could never let go of this relationship."

Stewart wrote most of the melody and the lyrics on the guitar before taking it to the studio, where Gouldman offered to help him complete the song. Gouldman suggested some different chords for the melody, and also came up with the intro and the bridge section of the song. Stewart said that the pair spent two or three days writing the song, which at that point had a bossa nova rhythm and principally featured guitars, before playing it to Godley and Creme. Stewart recorded a version with the other three members playing the song in the studio on traditional instruments – Creme on guitar, Gouldman on bass and Godley on drums – but Godley and Creme disliked the song, particularly Godley, as Stewart later recalled: "He said, 'It's crap', and I said, 'Oh right, OK, have you got anything constructive to add to that? Can you suggest anything?' He said, 'No. It's not working, man. It's just crap, right? Chuck it.' And we did. We threw it away and we even erased it, so there's no tape of that bossa nova version."

Having abandoned "I'm Not in Love", Stewart and Gouldman turned their attention to the track "Une Nuit A Paris", which Godley and Creme had been working on and which would later become the opening track on The Original Soundtrack album. However, Stewart noticed that members of staff in the band's Strawberry Studios were still singing the melody of "I'm Not in Love", and this convinced him to ask the other members of the group to consider reviving the song. Godley was still sceptical, but came up with a radical idea, telling Stewart, "I tell you what, the only way that song is gonna work is if we totally fuck it up and we do it like nobody has ever recorded a thing before. Let's not use instruments. Let's try to do it all with voices." Although taken aback by the suggestion, Stewart and the others agreed to try Godley's idea and create "a wall of sound" of vocals that would form the focal point of the record.

Recording

Stewart spent three weeks recording Gouldman, Godley and Creme singing "ahhh" 16 times for each note of the chromatic scale, building up a "choir" of 48 voices for each note of the scale. The main problem facing the band was how to keep the vocal notes going for an infinite length of time, but Creme suggested that they could get around this issue by using tape loops. Stewart created loops of about 12 feet in length by feeding the loop at one end though the tape heads of the stereo recorder in the studio, and at the other end through a capstan roller fixed to the top of a microphone stand, and tensioned the tape. By creating long loops the 'blip' caused by the splice in each tape loop could be drowned out by the rest of the backing track, providing that the blips in each loop did not coincide with each other. Having created twelve tape loops for each of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, Stewart recorded each loop to a separate track of the mixing desk. This effectively turned the mixing desk into a musical instrument complete with all the notes of the chromatic scale, which the four members together then "played", fading up three or four channels at a time to create "chords" for the song's melody. Stewart had put gaffer's tape across the bottom of each channel, which meant it was impossible to completely fade down the tracks for each note; this resulted in the constant background hiss of vocals heard throughout the song. Composer and music theory professor Thomas MacFarlane considered the resulting "ethereal voices" with distorted synthesized effects that are an example of early synclavier music to be a major influence on Billy Joel's hit ballad "Just the Way You Are", released two years later.

A basic guide track was recorded first in order to help create the melody using the vocals, but the proper instrumentation was added after the vocals had been recorded. In keeping with Godley's idea to focus on the voices, only a few instruments were used: a Fender Rhodes electric piano played by Stewart, a Gibson 335 electric guitar played by Gouldman for the rhythm melody, and a bass drum sound played by Godley on a Moog synthesizer which Creme had recently purchased and learnt how to program. The drum sound that was created was very soft and more akin to a heartbeat, in order not to overpower the rest of the track. The song does not feature a standard bass guitar line, but Gouldman added a bass guitar solo during the middle eight of the song, and Creme played piano during the middle eight and the bridge. The middle eight originally included lyrics, but Stewart and Gouldman were not happy with them and removed them, with Creme's piano replicating the original melody of the discarded lyrics. The middle eight and the outro also feature a toy music box which was recorded and double tracked out of phase.

Once the musical backing had been completed Stewart recorded the lead vocal and Godley and Creme the backing vocals, but even though the song was finished Godley felt it was still lacking something. Stewart said, "Lol remembered he had said something into the grand piano mics when he was laying down the solos. He'd said 'Be quiet, big boys don't cry' — heaven knows why, but I soloed it and we all agreed that the idea sounded very interesting if we could just find the right voice to speak the words. Just at that point the door to the control room opened and our secretary Kathy [Redfern] looked in and whispered 'Eric, sorry to bother you. There's a telephone call for you.' Lol jumped up and said 'That's the voice, her voice is perfect!' " The group agreed that Redfern was the ideal person, but Redfern was unconvinced and had to be coaxed into recording her vocal contribution, using the same whispered voice that she had used when entering the control room. These whispered lyrics would later serve as the inspiration for the name of the 1980s band Boys Don't Cry.

Release and promotion

According to Stewart, at the time of recording The Original Soundtrack the band was already being courted by Mercury Records (part of the Phonogram group) to leave Jonathan King's small UK Records label, where they were struggling financially. He said: "I rang them. I said come and have a listen to what we've done, come and have a listen to this track. And they came up and they freaked, and they said, 'This is a masterpiece. How much money, what do you want? What sort of a contract do you want? We'll do anything.' On the strength of that one song, we did a five-year deal with them for five albums and they paid us a serious amount of money." Despite impressing their new label with the track, Phonogram felt that it was not suitable for release as a single due to its length, and released "Life Is a Minestrone" as the first single from The Original Soundtrack instead. However, many influential figures in the music industry were demanding that "I'm Not in Love" be released as a single, and Mercury eventually bowed to the pressure and released it as the second single from the album. The band were forced to edit the track down to four minutes for radio play, but once it charted, pressure from the public and the media caused the radio stations to revert to playing the full version.

Released in May 1975, "I'm Not in Love" became the band's second number-one single and stayed at the top of the UK singles chart for two weeks from 28 June. In the US, the record peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks, deprived of the top spot by a different number-one song each week (Van McCoy's "The Hustle", The Eagles' "One of These Nights", and the Bee Gees' "Jive Talkin'"). In the UK the single was released in its full length version of over six minutes, while in the US and Canada it was released in an edited 3:42 version, and with a different B-side.

Personnel

Will to Power version

Will To Power recorded the song for their album Journey Home, releasing as the first single from the album in 1990. It was the band's last top ten hit, reaching number 7 on the pop charts in both the US and Canada.

Deni Hines version

In 1996, the Australian singer songwriter Deni Hines released "I'm Not in Love" as the fourth single from her debut album Imagination (1996). At the ARIA Music Awards of 1997, "I'm Not in Love" was nominated for two awards - ARIA Award for Best Female Artist losing to "Mary" by Monique Brumby and ARIA Award for Best Pop Release losing to "To the Moon and Back" by Savage Garden.

Track listing

1. "I'm Not in Love"
2. "It's Alright" (quiet summertime version)
3. "Joy" (full testament mix)
4. "It's Alright" (summertime remix)

Olive version

Following their debut album, the English trip hop band Olive recorded a cover of the song. At the cusp of their new record contract with Maverick Records at the time, the band debuted the song on the label's soundtrack for the Madonna film The Next Best Thing before releasing it as the debut single from their second album, Trickle.

Fronted by the lone vocals of singer Ruth-Ann Boyle, the song simulated the backing tracks of the original; the most audible modification made to the song is a percussion track in the style of drum and bass, turning the song into an upbeat dance track.

Accompanied by dance-oriented remixes on the single release, the song gained sufficient nightclub play to reach number one on the Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart (on the week of 1 July 2000), as well as airplay on dance-hits format radio.

Other cover versions

"I'm Not in Love" has been recorded by Petula Clark, Hervé Vilard (French and Spanish versions in 1975), Richie Havens, Dee Dee Sharp-Gamble, Amy Grant, Grandaddy, Stanley Turrentine, Chris Standring, Johnny Logan, Richard Clayderman, Krisma, Undercover, George Monroe, with a more danceable cover version, in 1989, Deborah Blando – whose version in Portuguese, "Somente O Sol (Only the Sun)", was a big hit in Brazil thanks to its inclusion on the soundtrack of the soap opera Corpo Dourado (Golden Body).

Other versions have been recorded by Julia Fordham, The Pretenders, Mike Francis, Brotherhood of Man, Red Red Meat, John O'Banion, Outrageous Cherry, Chyp-Notic, Fun Lovin' Criminals, Päivi Kautto-Niemi, The BB Band, Geb.el, Gloritone, Tori Amos, Unfinished Thought, Donny Osmond, Rick Springfield, Queen Latifah, Joey Kid from the group Trilogy, Lazlo Bane, Tex Perkins & His Ladyboyz, Rozz Williams (Accept the Gift of Sin), Juice, F. R. David, Peggy Lee and Japanese singer Ryohei. Former Supreme Scherrie Payne had a club hit with her version of the song in 1982 on Megatone Records.

A version of the song, arranged by Ann Odell and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, was recorded for the 1976 album Classic Rock.

In 1992, saxophonist Richard Elliot performed a cover for his album Soul Embrace.

British scouse house band Ultrabeat recorded a dance version of the song in 2006 with All Around the World records. The song is taken from their debut album called Ultrabeat - The Album and it appeared on Clubland 10 as "I'm Not in Love 2006".

In 2009, Hong Kong singer Susan Wong included a cover of the song on her smooth jazz / bossa nova album 511.

In 2010, Rock Sugar made a remix-cover of this song and Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law" called "Breaking the Love" on their album Reimaginator. Also in 2010, Brazilian singer and actress Marisa Orth recorded it for her debut album Romance Volume II.

In 2015 Canadian jazz singer-songwriter and pianist Diana Krall covered the song for her 12th studio album, Wallflower.

In 2016 Mark Kozelek covered the song on his album, Mark Kozelek Sings Favorites.