List | H | The Human League | 'Dare!' CD 1981

Track:	Name:	Time:
1.	The Things That Dreams Are Made Of	4:15
2.	Open Your Heart	3:56
3.	The Sound Of The Crowd	4:05
4.	Darkness	3:59
5.	Do Or Die	5:25
6.	Get Carter	1:02
7.	I Am The Law	4:08
8.	Seconds	4:59
9.	Love Action (I Believe In Love)	5:00
10.	Don't You Want Me	3:57
	Total	40:46

Comments:

Marsh and Ware were apparently unhappy with how The Human League turned out, so they both left to form The British Electric Foundation (BEF) and within that framework also Heaven 17. This left Oakey as the only performing member of the band. Wright turns his attention from the slide machines to the keyboards, and bass player Ian Burden is contacted as a temporary member. One night Oakey goes to a disco and meets two schoolgirls, Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall, which he convinces to join his band as dancers for the tour. Later also keyboardist Jo Callis joined the band, making them a total of six members after both Burden and the girls have become permanent.

With this drastic line-up change, how does it sound then? Well, there are still some catchy synth pop tunes, but far too many are really cheap and cheesy. Most of the characteristical humour is gone, and so is the surrealism and quirky sounds. The songs are definitely more pop-oriented, with more standard pop song structures but with less interesting songs. This is where they should have changed the band name, but since they after all had had some success with the two previous albums they kept the name.

The ironic thing is that now, when the band was merely a shadow if its former grandeour, they started having hits. The admittedly very catchy tune 'Don't You Want Me' topped the charts and got the band quite a lot of media attention (and nowadays you can find it on just about every "80:s collection"). The Human League had finally achieved commercial success, and lots of it.

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