What were your best, most alluring or wallet-emptying box sets of 2025? I Robot was an important one for us – an absolute prog/disco/yachty masterpiece in gloriously expanded form.
What does the Long Live Vinyl silver label signify? It means that whatever we’ve awarded it to is important and unmissable. It might be a vinyl cafe, shop, subscription service, release or reissue. It’s not 100% perfect, so although we’ll suggest room for improvement, it’s still unmissable. In short, miss at risk!
Read more: ‘Long Live Prog!’
Recorded at Abbey Road Studios like the majority of The Alan Parsons Project albums, ‘I Robot’ featured a variety of different lead vocalists including Steve Harley, Allan Clarke, Lenny Zakatek, Peter Straker, Jack Harris and Jaki Whitren, alongside a selection of session musicians including guitarist Ian Bairnson, bass player David Paton, drummer Stuart Tosh and of course, Eric Woolfson on keyboards with arrangements by Andrew Powell.
Four singles were actually released from the album, including the most successful, ‘I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You.’ In the accompanying music video, Parsons plays the role of a man in a surreal chase with an anonymous humanoid played by Woolfson.
As Davis later wrote in his 2013 autobiography, ‘The Soundtrack Of My Life,’ “They composed haunting, highly atmospheric, literate songs that address ambitious, conceptual subjects such as the impact of mechanisation on the human spirit…The Alan Parsons Project seemed to capture something about the mid-Seventies that made me believe it could reach a larger audience. Alan, after all, had worked as an engineer for The Beatles and Pink Floyd [and] Eric’s innate musicality found expression in his skills as an arranger, composer, and lyricist.”
The Alan Parsons Project enjoyed a stroke of luck with the album title and its cover, as the first Star Wars film appeared in US cinemas, three months before the album’s release. The biggest science fiction event of any medium in history, the film didn’t premiere in the UK until December 1977, but British sci-fi fans knew that it was coming and were hungry for anything remotely sci-fi related.
As Woolfson noted, “We brought out ‘I Robot’ almost exactly at the same time as Star Wars was released. Of course, Star Wars featured robots, and the only record sleeves in stores, especially in America, that had a robot on it was ours. Having a robot-like figure on the cover worked very much to our advantage.” Supported by a 10-date press tour of North America, ‘I Robot’ entered the Top 10 in the US, eventually going platinum for sales of over two million copies. Combined with the ‘I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You’ single and it successors, the campaign became among the most successful of The Alan Parsons Project’s career.
On a separate note, the accompanying expanded CD release includes a 2025 remaster of the original album by Showell at Abbey Road Studios, alongside 4 additional bonus tracks and a fully illustrated, 12-page booklet containing sleevenotes featuring quotes from Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson as well as lyric sheet. In addition, ‘I Robot’ will also be released on various vinyl formats including 180g classic black vinyl, and limited edition, 180g heavyweight clear vinyl, featuring half-speed remasters by Showell at Abbey Road Studios, and sleevenotes featuring quotes from Parsons and Woolfson.