What Goes Up

"What Goes Up" — The Alan Parsons Project and the Architecture of Progressive Pop

A Concept Record That Landed on Top 40

The Alan Parsons Project occupied a fascinating position in late 1970s music. Built around the production partnership of Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson, the group (really a collective of rotating vocalists and session musicians centered on those two creators) released albums with conceptual ambitions rarely associated with chart-oriented pop. They drew on science fiction, Edgar Allan Poe, the works of Isaac Asimov, and psychological theories as conceptual frameworks for music that somehow remained melodically accessible despite its intellectual scaffolding. In 1978, their album Pyramid continued this approach, and "What Goes Up" emerged as the project's brief entry onto the Billboard Hot 100.

The Alan Parsons Project in 1978

By 1978, the Alan Parsons Project had already established themselves as one of the more distinctive presences in progressive pop, having released Tales of Mystery and Imagination in 1976 and I Robot in 1977. Both albums had found audiences who appreciated music that rewarded careful listening without requiring the listener to abandon the pleasures of melody and arrangement. Alan Parsons himself had worked as an engineer at Abbey Road during the recordings of the Beatles' later albums and had engineered Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, experiences that clearly shaped his sense of what studio production could achieve. The Pyramid album built on this foundation with material themed around ancient Egyptian culture and the enduring mysteries that pyramids had come to represent in popular imagination.

Three Weeks on the Chart

The chart trajectory of "What Goes Up" was brief. The single debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 23, 1978, at position 89, moved to its peak of number 87 on September 30, 1978, and then slipped to position 100 the following week, completing a three-week chart run. The modest showing reflected the gap between the Alan Parsons Project's album-oriented audience and the demographic served by top-40 radio. Their fans bought albums and listened to them as complete works, not necessarily singles, and "What Goes Up" as an extracted track may not have fully captured the context that made the group's music work at its best. Still, even a brief Hot 100 appearance indicated that the record had crossed over to some degree beyond the core fanbase.

The Production Aesthetic

What distinguished Alan Parsons Project recordings from most of their chart contemporaries was the sophistication of the production. Parsons's engineering background was evident in the sonic detail of the recordings, the careful placement of instruments in the stereo field, the textural complexity beneath apparently straightforward arrangements. The group was among the first rock-adjacent acts to embrace the possibilities of multi-track production with the same ambition that classical recording studios had always brought to orchestral work. "What Goes Up" carried those qualities: it was a record that rewarded headphone listening and revealed details on repeated plays that were not immediately apparent.

Place in the Project's Legacy

The Alan Parsons Project went on to achieve their greatest commercial success with Eye in the Sky in 1982, but their late 1970s albums, including Pyramid, established the conceptual and sonic framework that made that later success possible. "What Goes Up" is a small piece of that story, a single that gave casual listeners a glimpse of something their album collections might be missing. The group's influence on progressive rock production and concept album design has been significant and lasting. Give "What Goes Up" a listen as part of the larger picture of what serious pop production was attempting at the end of the 1970s.

"What Goes Up" — The Alan Parsons Project's singular moment on the 1970s charts.