The song 10cc wrote as a parody of American musicals
10cc were melodic geniuses whose inventive art-pop sound was experimental but imminently catchy, not to mention hugely commercially successful. Their creative songwriting saw the band churn out mini-operas nearly ten minutes long, like ‘One Night in Paris’, with the same ease they came out with chart toppers like ‘Dreadlock Holiday’.
‘The Dean and I’, however, sat somewhere between parody and an earnest tale of domestic ideals. Taken from their 1973 eponymous debut album, although it reached number ten on the UK Singles Chart, Eric Stewart wasn’t a fan. “I hated it,” he admitted to NME during an interview back in 1976.
“This is the democratic side of the group at work, we’re prepared to try anything, no matter which one of the group hates the production or the song that we’ve got,” he explained. “We do try to go through and do it to its ultimate, and that particular song reminded me tremendously of Hollywood musicals like South Pacific and Oklahoma, which I abhor.”
Doubling down on his disdain, Stewart added: “I can’t say I really hate them. There’s not a word strong enough. To say what I feel about those musicals – I just hate them.”
The much-loathed song began with singer Lol Creme recounting a sock-pop-esque “how I met your mother” type story and is so obtuse in its efforts to get that across that it’s been widely considered a parody of songs like the Jerry Lee Lewis number ‘High School Confidential’. It’s treacly sweet, opening with the line: “Hey, kids, let me tell you how I met your mom / We were dancing and romancing at the senior prom”.
As the song goes, he woos the Dean’s daughter and, following a brief whirlwind romance, settles into a life of domestic monotony – until he gets rich: “It’s a wonderful world / When you’re rolling in dollars”. Added to the mix was the epic poem ‘Paradise Lost’ by John Milton, which is mentioned in the lyrics: “Now who would have guessed Milton’s Paradise Lost could be found,” when the childhood sweethearts find themselves bored.
While its stylistic similarity didn’t appeal to Stewart, 10cc members Creme and Godley wrote it that way intentionally, as a sardonic take on musicals. Godley said he “always had an affection for the ’30s and ’40s,” and added: “I was very into art deco at the particular time of writing that and I just wanted to do something in that vein, yet up to date, in a way, which I think we did very successfully in that track.”
In 2012, Godley told The Guardian that he’d “forgotten how avant-garde some of our music was”. Although some of it clearly didn’t land well with the entire band, he concluded that they “were constantly testing the waters of what we could and couldn’t do”.
