Song of the Day 10/4: The Alan Parsons Project, “I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You”
The more I hear from JD Vance, the more I think of this 1977 song. Though it was just a modest hit, No. 36 on the Hot 100, it helped push the band’s second LP, “I Robot,” into the Top 10, and it seems more apt today than ever.
So does the concept album it came from. The Alan Parsons Project, basically a partnership between producer Alan Parsons and composer Eric Woolfson with other musicians hired as needed, was inspired by Isaac Asimov’s robot stories, and when Woolfson approached Asimov with the idea, the author gave his enthusiastic support. Unfortunately he had already sold the rights to the book, which is why the album lacks the comma of Asimov’s “I, Robot,” but it deals with the same philosophical implications of artificial intelligence.
Some claim the song is sung by a robot addressing a human, but others think it’s the other way around. Reportedly, even Parsons and Woolfson, who got into musical theater after APP broke up in 1990 and died in 2009, didn’t agree on that point. I’m guessing the feeling would be mutual.
