Two of my long-time photographer friends and fellow Alan Parsons Project fans attended an AP² concert recently, so it got me thinking about what songs I loved and hated from this long-lived band.

Most of the instrumentals are robotic and pointless: Hawkeye, Cloudbreak, Breakaway, Urbania, Pipeline, Nucleus, etc.
On the other hand, instrumentals like Voyager and I Robot are pretty dope.
As a whole album, Tales of Mystery and the Imagination rivals some of the greatest albums ever created.
A lot of their songs are locked into my college years by association, and a couple of albums are directly connected to the beginning of the CD revolution, in the mid-1980s. Some of my first CDs to replace vinyl albums were Alan Parsons Project, though my very first CD was Peter Gabriel’s So.
Here is a list of what might be my favorites, but I could add to it if I shuffle past something I left out.
- Standing on Higher Ground (from Gaudi)
- The Same Old Sun (from Vulture Culture)
- Somebody Out There (from I Robot)
- Damned if I Do (from Eve)
- Time (from Turn of a Friendly Card), though this song is cemented to an event in my life in 1981.
- The Eagle Will Rise Again (from Pyramid)
- Silence and I (from Eye in the Sky)
- If I Could Change Your Mind (from Eve)
- Oh Life (There Must Be More) (from Try Anything Once)
- To One in Paradise (from Tales of Mystery and the Imagination)
- Turn It Up (from Try Anything Once)
- I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You (from I Robot)
This last one is connected to a story about human ugliness and pettiness. In about 1986, I was visiting a friend in Norman, Oklahoma. Among the other guests were a shallow, great-looking college girl, and a chubby supernurd who, like a lot of supernurds, hated good-looking, successful, popular people. He found I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You in the host’s record collection, turned it up, and glared at her through the whole song. She didn’t even notice.
So, what are my conclusions about the Alan Parsons Project? It was one of the important influences on 70s and 80s pop sounds. Some of it is lifelessly technical, but other songs in their catalog are very moving. And like a lot of bands, their early stuff is mostly their better stuff, because of a feedback loop: they are more popular, so they make better records, then they are less popular so they make worse records. But which came first, the bad music, or the absent fans?
