The Story Behind 10cc’s “I’m Not in Love”
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 22 April 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, when 10cc set out to record “I’m Not in Love,” they were working from an idea that ran against the kind of love songs filling the radio at the time. By the time it was finished, the song no longer resembled the version they had started with, and it didn’t fit neatly alongside the music around it either.
It found its audience anyway, and over time, it helped open the door to a different kind of pop sound. As part of our Story of a Song series, our own Greg Hengler, along with those closest to the creation of the track, shares how the song came together and why it still stands apart from the pack today.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:13.9 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. |
| 0:18.4 | And we love telling stories about songs. |
| 0:24.7 | The next one up, 10 Cs I'm Not in Love is one of rock's greatest love songs. Here's our own Greg Hangler with the story. |
| 0:31.7 | I'm Not in Love was released in the U.S. in early May, making the Hot 100 two weeks later. It steadily climbed the charts |
| 0:40.0 | until it made number two on July 26th, where it stalled for three weeks, kept from number one |
| 0:46.1 | by Van McCoy's disco classic, The Hustle, The Eagles, One of These Nights, and the Beegees jive-talking. |
| 0:53.9 | Guitarist Eric Stewart was inspired to write I'm Not in Love after his wife asked him why he didn't |
| 1:00.0 | say I love you more often to her. Stewart told her, well, if I say every day I love you, it's not |
| 1:06.3 | going to mean anything eventually. And that statement stuck in my head and led me to try to figure out |
| 1:12.4 | another way of saying it. And the result was, I chose to say I'm not in love, while |
| 1:18.4 | subtly giving all the reasons throughout the song why I was totally in love. |
| 1:24.5 | Here to tell the story of the song, our band members, Eric Stewart, Graham Goulman, |
| 1:30.3 | Lowell Cream, and Kevin Godley. |
| 1:33.3 | There was always still this desire to go one better with a song and do something different |
| 1:40.3 | with it. Hence, I'm not in love. The way that song developed, which, |
| 1:48.9 | looking back on it, it was astounding, we ever released it, we ever got it out, we ever got it |
| 1:53.3 | it finished. The title was Erics. We've been discussing writing a love song, but I don't think we wanted to write a, you know, a cliché. |
| 2:06.6 | And I'm not in love was the perfect title. |
| 2:09.6 | I wrote all the words completely. |
| 2:12.6 | And I took it into the studio and Graham Gullum and said, |
... |
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