Among the most inventive and influential bands in the history of popular music, 10cc arise one of the very few acts to have achieved commercial, critical and creative success in equal measure.
Testament to 10cc’s ongoing appeal, the band can count a generation straddling array of fellow artists, from Axl Rose to Sophie Ellis Bextor and Chrissie Hynde to The Feeling’s Dan Gillespie among their millions of fans.
I’m Not In Love, written by Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart, features prominently in the soundtrack to the 2014 blockbuster film Guardians of the Galaxy, which spawned a No 1 album. Meanwhile, a key element of the soundtrack to 2010’s The Social Network, about the creation of Facebook, is Dreadlock Holiday, which also became the Sky Sports cricket theme in Australia.
10cc has sold more than 30 million albums around the world and the band’s longevity is testament to their timeless songs, as is their continuing to traverse the globe and play countries as disparate as Iceland and South Africa, Latvia and Japan, as well as across Europe, Australia and New Zealand, Canada and the US.
Founder member Gouldman attributes 10cc’s lasting appeal to the quality and individuality of the band’s songs. “They don’t seem to date; they are original, we never followed any trend we simple wrote for our own pleasure. The fact that the songs are being played as often on the radio today as they ever were shows how true that is,” he says.
