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.

"[6] 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.

Stewart said that the pair spent two or three days writing the song, which at that point had a bossa nova rhythm and used principally guitars, before playing it to Godley and Creme.

"[6] 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.

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.

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 tape across the bottom of each channel so that it was impossible to completely fade down the tracks for each note, resulting in the constant background of vocals heard throughout the song.

[7] Composer and music theory professor Thomas MacFarlane considered the resulting "ethereal voices" with distorted synthesized effects to be a major influence on Billy Joel's hit ballad "Just the Way You Are", released two years later.

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.

He went on to say that "it soars, it tickles, it leaves swellings on the forearms just below the elbows", and that "it's 10cc doing their instinctive best to root out the kind of rolling, well-modulated moodiness they could have been turning out all along".

[11] In Melody Maker, Colin Irwin called the record "outstandingly beautiful" and said, "it's such a perfectly constructed work that the song itself should quickly gain standard status in fields beyond rock".

[12] Sue Byrom of Record Mirror wrote, "Slow and lush, with beautifully building choruses, it's evocative of all things nice.

"[13] In the USA, Record World said that "One of the most technically perfect productions of this or any year is kind of a cross between 2001 and the golden era Lennon-McCartney ballad days.

"[14] "I'm Not in Love" has enjoyed lasting popularity, with over three million plays on US radio since its release, and it won three Ivor Novello Awards in 1976 for Best Pop Song, International Hit of the Year, and Most Performed British Work.

The song also appears in the 2006 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories on the in-game radio station Emotion 98.3.

Released by Epic Records, it reached the top ten on the pop charts of the US, Canada, Norway, and Portugal.

In 1996, the Australian singer songwriter Deni Hines released "I'm Not in Love" as the fourth single from her debut album Imagination (1996).