The Original Soundtrack

A surreal jukebox of satire, sophistication and strange beauty, The Original Soundtrack finds 10cc at their most ambitious. An album that leaps between genres with a wink, while still delivering one of the most affecting pop songs ever written.

Released in March 1975, this third LP marked a turning point for the band. They’d just signed a million-dollar deal with Mercury Records, secured on the strength of a single track: the now-iconic “I’m Not in Love.” Built on a vast, breathy choir of multitracked vocals, it’s a love song masquerading as denial, where the absence of emotion is heartbreak in disguise. It’s the emotional centre of the record, and the Trojan horse that got it made.

But 10cc were never just balladeers. Elsewhere, the album takes delight in absurdity. “Life Is a Minestrone” gleefully blends existentialism and pasta metaphors into a glam-tinged singalong, while “Une Nuit a Paris” opens the album with a sprawling, three-part operetta that makes Queen look restrained. It’s high concept but not highbrow, tongue firmly in cheek, arrangement dialled to eleven.

Despite its scattergun approach, The Original Soundtrack somehow coheres. There’s a cinematic sweep to its sequencing, fitting, given its title, and a constant tension between emotional sincerity and musical parody. You never quite know if they’re mocking their subject or falling in love with it.

For some critics, the pastiche was too much. But for many, including Rolling Stone’s Ken Barnes, it was precisely this balancing act, complex but accessible, ironic yet heartfelt, that made The Original Soundtrack such a compelling listen. Decades on, it still holds up: a clever, strange, and sneakily moving record from a band that refused to play it straight.