Track of the Week: 10cc: The Wall Street Shuffle (1974)

10cc came out of Manchester in the 1970s, made up of the songwriting team of Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. The four had worked variously as hit writers for hire before forming a band together, and each member was a multi-instrumentalist who could also perform as vocalist as required. This lead to a talented, versatile and initially remarkably ego-less group. Since the Great Punk Culling, and thanks to the over-playing of 'I'm Not In Love', 10cc are viewed as bloated soft-rock AOR merchants. Which is a bit unfair, as this ignores the band's sarcastic wit and knack for writing complex and arty pop songs. 'The Wall Street Shuffle' is a good example of this. The song opens with a crunching, catchy guitar riff as the band take the piss out of money driven American businessmen. Musically, the song then proceeds to go through a number of musical twists and turns, barely repeating itself over the course of four minutes. Yet somehow, the song holds together beautifully and was catchy enough to become a top ten hit in the UK. The punchy guitars give way to twinkling keyboards, as the band name-check American financial firm Dow Jones and the Great Depression anthem 'Brother Can You Spare A Dime' in almost the same breath. With glossy production and sumptuous layers of overdubs, the listener might at first be reminded of contemporary chart toppers Queen. But 10cc have a light poppiness in place of Queen's hard rock bombast, and, unlike Freddie and co., were capable of sharp lyrical wit. 10cc's sharp, sarcastic sense of humour is never far away, especially in the sparkling keyboard-led bridge, in which they sneer 'Oh, Howard Hughes / Did your money make you better?'. Not to mention the couplet in the second verse 'Bet you'd sell your mother / You can buy another'. The sense of fun is present in the music, too, with nice little touches like the cheesy low voice singing 'You gotta be cool on Wall Street / When your index is low', but never to the detriment of the music itself. Perhaps the best bit of the song is the coda, in which a pretty overdubbed keyboard line is undercut by harsh bursts of guitar to create a tongue-in-cheek sinister effect. 10cc were intent on creating intelligent pop music that didn't take itself too seriously. When this worked, they wound up creating some of the most enjoyable pop music of the era, and although they would throw it all away later, they certainly don't deserve to be lumped in with the usual suspects on the Soft Rock Scrapheap. Remember them this way.