Five The Human League better than the waitress song
His mother bought him a synthesizer
Got the Human League into advise her
Now he’s making lots of noise
Playing along with the art school boys
The words of The Undertones there from their ranting romp My Perfect Cousin demonstrating perfectly the snideness often directed at The Human League in the 80′s music scene. The Human League were considered by some at the time as not being ‘real’ musicians because of their heavy use of synths. Those of us that love syth and electronic music know that to be a rubbish claim but anything new does tend to be met with derision upon arrival.
The Human League nonetheless managed to find their fame and fortune by putting out a few crowd pleasing tunes. Most notable of the successful tunes for The Human League was,of course, Don’t You Want Me. A song which will, no doubt, live on forever in the rotation on stations such as VH1 Classics.
Foolish would be the person that claimed that Don’t You Want Me wasn’t a well produced and all around enjoyable tune. Yet, I can’t stand hearing it any more simply due to how over played it has been over the years.
The overwhelming success of Don’t You Want Me has resulted in it highly overshadowing the rest of the The Human League back catalogue. Thanks to the ability of most 30 somethings to sing the opening refrain from the song, there are many folks around that will think the band only struck gold the once.
A shame on many levels because there are so many quality songs to be found from The Human League. Not only are they as good as ‘the waitress song’ but often down right better than it.
Here are my top five examples of The Human League songs that are superior to any songs involving cocktail waitresses.
5. The Sound Of The Crowd
You just have to love that beat in this song. Okay, so the lyrics aren’t going to win any awards but The Sound Of The Crowd is just meant to sound good and it does! Released in 1981 as part of their short-lived plan to released colour coded ‘red’ and ‘blue’ singles. The Sound Of The Crowd was a red single which was suppose to label it a dance song. Songs that were labelled as blue were suppose to be the more poppy songs from The Human League. An interesting marketing idea, if nothing else.
4. The Lebanon
Alright, so nobody is going to turn to The Human League for direction on their political views. Some even argued that the band had no place in making comment on the Lebanese civil war but I always thought it was a gutsy song. Not only on the list merely to give the band a pat on the head, I out rightly like the guitar bit. It could sit safely at home on a song by The Cure. Which, is never a bad thing.
3. Mirror Man
What happens when Motown meets synthpop? Mirror Man! The stomping pace of this song from The Human League could easily be at home in a Smokey Robinson song but the synths and the tell tale Phil Oakey song mark it firmly as their own. There isn’t a song around that sounds anything like it.
2. (Keep Feeling) Fascination
Another one of The Human League’s red singles, (Keep Feeling) Fascination hit number 2 in the UK Charts back in 1983. Though the concept of the red and blue singles may not have lasted, it is clear that those red songs were some of their finest work. (Keep Feeling) Fascination has such a fresh feel to it and is one of those songs that crosses the divide of musical taste. More than one hip hop focused friend has commented on how much they love this song from The Human League.
On a side note, it proved nearly impossible to find a version of this song on Youtube where embedding was allowed. There were no problems with any other songs from The Human League but every version of this song I found had been limited to not allow embedding. Strange.
1. Louise
Perhaps not the choice many would have expected at the top of a list of songs from The Human League and for certain not the best music video they did! However, the reasons this song works are numerous.
Phil Oakey shows off the emotional depth of his voice in a way only equalled in his solo song, Together In Electric Dreams. His voice was allowed to shine and properly lead the song with the girl’s kept as incidental voices in the song. This allows him to paint a proper story with his voice. Right from the start there is such a mellow vibe in the song that you are left feeling everybody involved is close to tears.
A true work of synth pop art !
Tags: 80's Music, 80's Videos, The Human League
