 | Human League - "Don't You Want Me" ..Baby?
Tags: 08-08-08, 08/08/08, 1981, 1982, 80's, 99, Ann, as, Baby, bar, best, Born, Britain, Car, Catherall, cocktail, Don't, eighties, Electronic, Emo, England, Human, in, Is, Joanne, League, Me, New, Oakey, Philip, Records, rover, SAAB, SD1, sheffield, Star, Sulley, Susan, Synth, Techno, UK, Virgin, waitress, Want, Wave, were, working, You
Description:
The history: http://www.drownedinsound.com/directory/artists/The_Human_League
Youtube Insight Stats as of Nov 1, 2008:
The "Hottest" spot in the video is at 2:56 (The Rover SD1 and the Sabb 99 seem to be the most interesting part of the video for many - the average viewer is a 40 year old makle living in the UK); the most frequently looked at parts of the video are the cars.
37% of the viewers are Female & 63% Male. 13-17 year olds are @12%, 18-24 @8%, 25-34 @11%, 35-44 @35%, 45-54 @28%. 55-64 @5%, 65+ @1%
Nations with the highest percentage of total views:
1. United Kingdom 30.35% 2. United States 28.83% 3. Canada 13.35% 4. Ireland 12.14%
5. Germany 10.92% 6. Spain 10.32%
7. Chile 10.32% 8. Belgium 9.71%
9. Italy 9.10% 10. Sweden 8.80%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_You_Want_Me
The Human League - Don't You Want Me. 1981
With a hit album and three hit singles in a row Virgin's Simon Draper decided to pull one more single from the album before the end of 1981. Their choice of "Don't You Want Me" instantly caused a row with Oakey who did not want another single released because he was convinced that "the public were now sick of hearing The Human League" and the choice of the "poor quality filler track" would almost certainly be a disaster, wrecking the group's new found popularity Virgin were adamant that a fourth single was going to be released and Oakey finally agreed, on the condition that a large colour poster was given away with the single because he felt fans would "feel ripped off" by the 'substandard' single alone.[3]
"Don't You Want Me" was released in the UK on 5 December 1981 and to everyone in the band (and especially Oakeys) amazement it went almost immediately to number one and remained in the UK charts for 13 weeks. The success was repeated six months later with the release of Dare in the U.S., with "Don't You Want Me" hitting number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Billboard magazine ranked it as the United States' sixth-biggest hit of 1982.
The lyrics were originally inspired after lead singer and front man Philip Oakey read a story in a "trashy tabloid". Originally conceived as a male solo, Oakey was inspired by the film A Star Is Born and decided to turn the song in to a conflicting duet with one of the bands two teenage female vocalists. Susan Ann Sulley was asked to take on the role. Up until then she and the other female vocalist Joanne Catherall had only been assigned backing vocals; Sulley says she was chosen only through luck of the draw.[1] There are two more realistic reasons for her choice, that Sulley was the better singer and/or that Catherall, a very introverted character at the time, shied away from the role.
An unofficial Susan Ann Sully page:
http://www.susanne-sulley.net/home.htm
Music video
Susanne Sulley in the iconic 1981 "Don't You Want Me" video.
Susanne Sulley in the iconic 1981 "Don't You Want Me" video.
In 1981 record company Virgin were becoming aware that promotional music video was evolving into an important marketing tool, with MTV being launched that year. Because it was agreed that the video for Open Your Heart had looked "cheap and nasty", for "Don't You Want Me" they commissioned a much more elaborate and expensive promotional video than for any of their previous releases.
The music video for the song was filmed in Slough, UK in November 1981 and has the theme of the shooting and editing of a murder-mystery film, featuring the band members as characters and production staff. Due to it being a "making of" video, the crew and camera apparatus used within appear throughout. It was conceived and directed by filmmaker Steve Barron, and has at its core the interaction between a successful actress played by Susan Ann Sulley walking out on 'film director' Philip Oakey on a film set. It is based on the theme of the film A Star Is Born. Shot on a cold, wet, winter night it was shot on 35mm film instead of the cheaper video tape prevalent at the time. Susan Sulley states now that Steve Baron was heavily influenced by the cinematography of the promo video for the Ultravox single "Vienna" and used it as a benchmark when shooting "Don't You Want Me". Steve Baron was also influenced by François Truffaut and his film Day for Night and because of that the clapper board seen in the video bears the inscription "Le League Humaine" as a tribute to Truffaut. The video is credited for making Oakey, Sulley and Catherall universally known visual icons of the early 1980s; but became controversial later for a scene where Jo Callis appears to shoot Joanne Catherall with a pistol from a car window (a Saab 99 turbo). The scene is edited out of the DVD version and when shown on MTV. The other car that was used in the video, was a gold W-Reg Rover SD1. The video was released in December 1981, just as the music video culture was becoming a standard in music, and it was a major contribution to the song's commercial success.
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 | Human
Tags: Human, I'm, Iam, League, only
Description:
A classic Hit !
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 | The Human League - Love Action (I Believe In Love)
Tags: action, believe, human, league, love
Description:
www.theleagueunlimited.blogspot.com
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 | Human League - (Keep Feeling) Fascination
Tags: 80s, Fascination, Feeling, Human, Keep, League, music, video
Description:
It was one of my favorite music video when I was a kid.
Video from 1983.
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 | The Human League - The Lebanon
Tags: human, league, lebanon
Description:
www.theleagueunlimited.blogspot.com
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 | The Human League - (Keep Feeling) Fascination
Tags: fascination, feeling, human, keep, league
Description:
www.theleagueunlimited.blogspot.com
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 | The Human League - Open Your Heart
Tags: heart, human, league
Description:
www.theleagueunlimited.blogspot.com
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 | The Human League - Louise
Tags: human, league, louise
Description:
www.theleagueunlimited.blogspot.com
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 | Mirror Man
Tags: Human, League, Man, Mirror
Description:
Human League's "Mirror Man"
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 | The Human League - Being Boiled
Tags: being, boiled, human, league
Description:
www.theleagueunlimited.blogspot.com
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 | The Human League - Human [Extended A&I Mix]
Tags: 1986, 80's, A&I, classic, Crash, Extended, Human, League, Mix, music, new, Oakey, Philip, pop, synth, The, tribute, UK, video, wave
Description:
Human League's Human "Extended A&I Mix" remixed by DJVlooX & edited at IBN Productions 2008.
Review.- The Human League are an English synthpop/New Wave band formed in 1977, who, after a change in line up, achieved great popularity in the 1980s and have continued recording and performing with moderate commercial success in the 1990s and 2000s.
Originally a synthesizer-based group from Sheffield, England, the only constant band member since the Human League formed in 1977 is vocalist and songwriter Philip Oakey. Today The Human League are still recording and performing. The group is now presented as a trio of Oakey together with long serving female vocalists Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Gayle.
In 1981, Virgin records paired them with former Stranglers producer Martin Rushent, and the first result was the single "The Sound of the Crowd", which saw them at last achieve success in the singles chart. Guitarist Jo Callis (formerly of The Rezillos) was now recruited to the band, and with Rushent at the helm, The Human League recorded their most successful album to date, Dare. It achieved huge success, fuelled by its further hit singles, "Open Your Heart", "Love Action"/"Hard Times" and most famously "Don't You Want Me", which reached number one in the UK charts during the Christmas of 1981 and was one of the biggest selling singles of that year, and it also charted at number one in the US during the summer of 1982. These three releases were accompanied by striking promo videos ("Love Action" based on the movie The Graduate). In the summer of 1982, a remix album of Dare entitled Love and Dancing was released under the group name League Unlimited Orchestra, reaching number three on the UK album chart. During their Dare phase, the Human League were often associated with New Romantic movement.
In November 1982, the Motown influenced electro pop single "Mirror Man" reached number two in the UK chart. The follow-up single released during April 1983, "(Keep Feeling) Fascination" similarly peaked at number two. The following months proved to be difficult ones for the band as they struggled to record a follow up to Dare. A six song EP called Fascination! compiled the singles "Mirror Man" and "Fascination" together with the new track "I Love You Too Much" from the original recording sessions for their new album, later to be named Hysteria. The EP was released in America as a stop-gap and also became a strong seller as an import in the UK.
Finally in May 1984 the band released the politically charged single "The Lebanon". Its rock guitar-driven harder edge was a considerable and surprising departure from their previous material, and the single peaked at number eleven in the UK. This was followed shortly after by the album Hysteria, so called because of the difficult and tense recording process, it entered the UK charts at number three however it climbed no further and critics and fans were divided by the new direction the band had taken. The second single was the rather downbeat "Life on Your Own", with its opening line of "winter is approaching, there is snow upon the ground" making it a strange choice of single to be released in the middle of summer. Again the single missed the UK top ten reaching number sixteen, and with the parent album Hysteria failing to live up to expected sales thoughts of a third single were put on hold.
However, later that year, success outside of the Human League came for Oakey in the shape of the huge hit single "Together in Electric Dreams", a collaboration with one of his idols, synth pioneer Giorgio Moroder. The track was taken from the film soundtrack to Electric Dreams and was to prove a massive hit.
The pair then recorded an album for Virgin, Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder, but this met with rather less success and the following two singles failed to make the UK Top 40. However the success of the Oakey and Moroder track encouraged the Human League's record label to release one final single from Hysteria in November 1984, the ballad "Louise" (UK number 13).
In 1986, the group found themselves in creative stagnation, struggling to record material to follow up on their previous success. Key songwriter Jo Callis departed, replaced by drummer Jim Russell, and Virgin paired the Human League up with cutting-edge American R&B producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis who had just scored a huge worldwide hit earlier that year with Janet Jackson's Control. The result was the Crash album. It did provide an American number-one single, "Human", but other singles made smaller chart impact.
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