The Human League’s ‘Dare’ turns 45 on 16 October
The Human League released “Dare” on 16 October 1981 through Virgin Records, produced by Martin Rushent, and the album turns 45 this year.
The Human League, the Sheffield synth-pop band led by Philip Oakey, released “Dare” on 16 October 1981 through Virgin Records. The album turns 45 this year. Martin Rushent produced it with the band at his Genetic Sound studio in Streatley, Berkshire, between March and September 1981, and it was issued in the United States the following year on A&M under the title “Dare!”.
The record arrived after the band’s near-collapse. Founding members Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh had left in October 1980 to form Heaven 17, leaving Oakey and visual director Philip Adrian Wright to rebuild the line-up around teenage recruits Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley, along with synthesizer players Ian Burden and Jo Callis. “Dare” reached number one on the UK Albums Chart in its second week of release, stayed on the chart for 77 weeks and has since been certified triple platinum by the BPI. Rolling Stone and The Village Voice both later credited its biggest single, “Don’t You Want Me”, with helping trigger the Second British Invasion of the US charts.
The Human League’s ‘Dare’ tracklist and credits
The original ten-track running order was “The Things That Dreams Are Made Of”, “Open Your Heart”, “The Sound of the Crowd”, “Darkness” and “Do or Die” on side one, followed by “Get Carter” (an instrumental cover of Roy Budd’s theme), “I Am the Law”, “Seconds”, “Love Action (I Believe in Love)” and “Don’t You Want Me” on side two. Four singles were drawn from the album: “The Sound of the Crowd” (24 April 1981), “Love Action (I Believe in Love)” (31 July 1981), “Open Your Heart” (2 October 1981) and “Don’t You Want Me” (27 November 1981), which became the UK Christmas number one for 1981 and later topped the Billboard Hot 100 in the US.
Credits on the sleeve list Philip Oakey on vocals and synthesizers, Philip Adrian Wright on slides and occasional synthesizer, Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley on vocals, and Ian Burden and Jo Callis on synthesizers, with Martin Rushent handling programming and production and Dave Allen on assistant programming and engineering. Ken Ansell designed the sleeve, styled after a Vogue magazine cover, and Brian Aris shot the photography. A remix companion, “Love and Dancing”, credited to the League Unlimited Orchestra and again produced by Rushent, followed in 1982.
About The Human League
The Human League formed in Sheffield in 1977, when Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware, previously working as computer operators, began writing electronic music together and recruited singer Philip Oakey. Under the name The Human League from early 1978, the trio signed to Bob Last’s Edinburgh label Fast Product and released the single “Being Boiled” that June, followed by the instrumental EP “The Dignity of Labour” in 1979. Philip Adrian Wright joined as director of visuals around the same time, running slide projections and film during live shows.
The band signed to Virgin Records in May 1979. Their debut album, “Reproduction”, followed that August, and the second, “Travelogue”, reached number 16 in the UK in May 1980. Creative disagreements between Oakey and Ware came to a head later that year: Ware and Marsh left to found Heaven 17 with singer Glenn Gregory, while Oakey and Wright retained the Human League name along with the band’s outstanding debts. To fill out the line-up for an already-booked tour, Oakey recruited two teenagers he had seen dancing at Sheffield’s Crazy Daisy nightclub, Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley, as backing vocalists, alongside synthesizer player Ian Burden. Guitarist and songwriter Jo Callis, formerly of the Rezillos, joined in April 1981 as the sixth member.
Under producer Martin Rushent at his Genetic Sound studio, the retooled band recorded “Dare”, released on 16 October 1981. It gave Virgin its first number-one album since Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” in 1973 and won Rushent the Brit Award for British Producer of the Year in 1982, with the band taking the award for Best British Newcomer. Wright, Burden and Callis had all left the band by the end of the 1980s, and the Human League continued as the trio of Oakey, Catherall and Sulley through albums including “Hysteria” (1984), “Crash” (1986) and “Octopus” (1995), the last of which produced the UK top-ten single “Tell Me When”. Forty-five years on from “Dare”, Oakey, Catherall and Sulley remain the group’s constant line-up.
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