2000 Great Songs #1434: Breakdown

I suppose this one comes from the Guilty Pleasures file, as I'm not really a fan of the Alan Parsons Project. On paper, at least, they should have appealed to me back in high school--Parsons was famously known for having engineered Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, which was obviously a huge part of my teenage years, and their concept albums walked the line between prog and pop. Yet I mostly just found them kinda dull, aside from some of the singles that clogged up the classic rock stations.

But I really like "Breakdown," off 1977's robot-themed I Robot. A lot of this is the bassline, one of those wondrously simple things that just gets stuck in your head forever. And the vocals are provided by a genuine ringer, Allan Clarke, co-founder and primary vocalist from The Hollies. But I think I mostly remain transfixed by the track because of its initial evasiveness. I heard the song on the radio at some point and really liked it, but had no idea who it was by and thus it just got lodged in my brain with little hope of recapturing it. (Ah, those glorious pre-internet days, where if you heard something on the radio but missed the DJ chatter it could be lost forever!) The song just sort of rattled around in the back of my brain for a few years, the details gradually dissipating but the core bass riff and melody holding firm, until I randomly heard it some years later and finally knew who it was by and was able to procure a copy.

Live 2013 with symphony:

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