Songfacts®:

• Quoth the Raven "Nevermore"
  
  "The Raven" is the opening track on an Edgar-Allan-Poe-themed concept album titled Tales of Mystery and Imagination, The Alan Parsons Project's studio debut. The song is based on Poe's poem of the same title.
  
  The Raven is one of Poe's most enduring works. First published in 1845, it remains one of the more lauded poems in the English language and is often referenced in modern works of pop culture. It tells the story of a man mourning a lover named Lenore. A raven comes in through his window and torments him with reminders of the finality of his lost love.
  
  The song's lyrics follow the same narrative as the poem but they don't draw verbatim from the original work. In a 1976 interview with Fred Dellar of New Musical Express, Parsons explained that changes had to be made for Poe's writing to work as music, but he didn't want to stray too far. "We tried to use lines that preserved Poe's identity as much as possible," Parsons said. "It would have been defeating the object if we'd have got too far away."
• The album's liner notes claim this is the first song to use a vocoder. That claim hasn't been verified, but it's definitely one of the earliest rock songs to make use of it. A vocoder distorts voices and gives them a robotic sound.
  
  The person singing through the vocoder is Alan Parsons. It's one of two Tales of Mystery and Imagination tracks he does vocals for (the other being "To One In Paradise") and one of the few songs he sang on.
• Leonard Whiting sings lead. Whiting was a child star who began performing in musicals at 12 years old. He also does the narration in "To One In Paradise."
  
  Eric Woolfson, co-creator of The Alan Parsons Project and co-writer on every track on Tales Of Mystery And Imagination, provides backing vocals. The choir parts were done by Bob Howes and the English Chorale.
• This was the second of three singles released off Tales of Mystery and Imagination. The first was "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether," and the third was "To One In Paradise."
• The Project recorded part of this song at Mama Jo's Studio in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, and another part in Abbey Road Studios in London.
• Parsons reissued Tales of Mystery and Imagination in 1987. In the updated version of "The Raven," he added a guitar solo from Project member Ian Bairnson.
• The German band Gregorian covered this song in 2004 on their album The Dark Side. In 2013, rapper Danny Brown sampled "The Raven" for his song "Clean Up" on Old.