Seminal Works

The records that helped the art-pop trailblazers crack the big time - and broke their original line-up.

- Michael Heatley

This quartet of mid-70s albums clad in distinctive Hipgnosis artwork represents the peak, certainly in commercial terms, of 10cc's career. While earlier efforts on Jonathan King's UK label were impressive enough, the breakthrough to the mass market came with 1975's The Original Soundtrack and its atmospheric single, I'm Not In Love. The departure of Kevin Godley and Lol Creme after the following year's How Dare You! failed to affect the band's chart trajectory, but deprived them of a large chunk of their humour and edge.

Like Queen, the Manchester group cleverly combined hits with an "album-band" credibility. And while they lacked a Freddie Mercury-style frontman, all four members wrote in differing combinations. Their close personal bonds, forged in the Manchester scene of the 60s and integral to their operation, would gradually be eroded Gouldman is the only original in today's successful road band - despite their signing to Mercury records in 1975 after a bidding war had split the ranks, Eric Stewart and Creme reportedly voting for Virgin over safe, mainstream Mercury.

The Original Soundtrack had been in the can long before the band signed on the line, thanks to owning Strawberry Studios in Stockport. The Godley and Creme-penned opener, Une Nuit A Paris, had a quasi-operatic, Bohemian Rhapsody style grandeur, but it was the more succinct I'm Not In Love that took the spotlight, though Godley's inspired vocal arrangement and Creme's suggestion of using tape loops rendered Gouldman and Stewart's UK chart-topper a group effort.