Best Of The Human League, The - Human League (The) > Reviews > Don't! You Don't Want This!

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Definitely a cut above the rest
Lyrics	Standard
Quality and consistency of tracks	Mixed
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Average
Value for Money

Advantages:	Early 80's synth - pop pioneers' best collated
Disadvantages:	No "Don't You Want Me" !

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

I know you can't believe it when you hear that....... their biggest hit is omitted! But it's true.

**NOW WITH ALBUM COVER IMAGE INCLUDED: PLEASE DON'T FEEL THE NEED TO RE-RATE AS THERE'S NO NEW TEXT!***

So I'm in HMV during my lunchtime and therefore in a bit of a rush. They're doing their occasional 3 for £20 offer on CDs and I already have Aretha Franklin's Lady Soul and a 60's reggae/ska compilation in my mitts and I fancy something different. After F (for Franklin) comes the G's: Green Day, Gomez, GZA. Nope. H. Haircut 100 (mmmmmmm, tempting), Human League. Yeah, the Human League. Their pioneering fizzy blend of synth pop and droll monotone lyrics should still sound pretty stoosh on my stereo. Oh look, there's a Best Of. Love Action, Mirror Man, Human, Sound Of The Crowd. Lovely, they're all there, I thought, in my rush to purchase my three CDs and get back to the office before Fat Glenn the clockwatcher starts having a go. Then I played it. Here's my usual track listings with the obligatory mark out of five. Afterwards follows a brief list of the glaring omissions. How could I have been so dumb? There's a lot of weak links here......

**Love Action (I Believe In Love)**
"I believe in you/In believe in me/And you know I believe in love" goes the hookline in the bridge before the chorus. Anyone who owned a pair of ears and a radio in 1981 will know this number three hit from the Sheffield sextet. It makes an impressive start to this best of album and it's whinging synth and tinny beats epitomise an era. (4/5)

**Mirror Man**
More whinging synths before Jo and Susan's "ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh" refrain kicks in with some natty finger clicking and more dated drums take you away to a time of colourful make-up and fireman-bothering amounts of hairspray. A bit like my earlier Duran Duran and Culture Club reviews, I am once again flummoxed by the meaning of the lyrics: "Here comes the mirror man/Says he's the people's plan". Eh? Still, brilliant song, well produced and their joint second biggest hit, reaching number 2 in November 1982. (5/5)

**Open Your Heart**
A lovely dance tune from Dare that, again, fitted in perfectly with the times (ie 1981). It reached number 6 in the autumn of 1981 and I have bad memories of this as a nine year old and hearing that grandad had died. This was playing on the Peter Powell drivetime show on Radio 1 at the time. Funny the things you remember. (3/5)

**Sound Of The Crowd**
This was the band's breakthrough hit and the first release from Dare. Typical of the era, it's drenched in synths, drum machine and dog-scaring production. In fact real instruments were sooooooo 70's at this point in music because punk, glam and prog rock respectively had faded out at the end of the 70's and this thing called New Wave threatened to engulf the planet. Not a bad tune, but certainly it's number 12 peak in the charts in May 1981 tells the whole story. (3/5)

**Don't You Know I Want You?**
A very ordinary filler track from Hysteria, Don't You Know I Want You?'s inclusion is the first baffling move by the compilers of this collection. Alarm bells should start ringing at this point for the listener with this non-descript track's very presence. (1/5)

**Life On Your Own**
My favourite Human League album is 1984's Hysteria, the album that produced this track along with Louise and The Lebanon. This is in strict contradiction to most music critics (good!) and there's a reason for it. The songs are ridiculously simple and catchy. "I guess you always wanted............life on your own" deadpans Phil Oakey whilst Jo and Susan coo trillingly away in the background. The beats have moved up a notch since Dare and sound a bit beefier. I find the lyrics a bit bland, though. This made number 16 in June 1984 and was the second single released from Hysteria.

**Seconds**
From Dare, again, another album track and this together with the following Hard Times are quite falbbergasting inclusions. Even when you define "best of", it's like including Laughing Gnome on a David Bowie compilation or My Way
on a Sex Pistols collection. Can you hear that sound? It's the barrel being scraped. (2/5)

**Hard Times**
Hard Times was the bside of the fantastic Love Action. A bside, in my opinion, does not constitute a Best Of appearance under any circumstances, unless it's by Oasis! This is a very dated sounding track that would struggle to make into a repackaged and expanded Dare. (2/5)

**Do Or Die**
According to the liner notes on my CD, this track is the Bside to a single (they don't say which) and is here in its original form and unavailable like this anywhere on CD. It's also a track from Dare and I played both versions back to back and I can't hear any major differences. It's another synthy plod through yesterday and confirms my belief that bsides are bsides for a reason! (2/5)

**Heart Like A Wheel**
The sole hit 1990's comeback Romantic? album. With the band now down to a trio of Phil, Jo and Susan, this was make or break for The Human League. Unfortnuately, this attempt at a regeneration of the band falters when you consider Heart Like A Wheel's position between two fires: namely 90's dance and 80's synth pop. It's a fabulous identity crisis to have but it just doesn't work. It reached 29 in August 1990. (2/5)

**Lebanon**
The first single release from Hysteria reached a paltry number 11. It's an all out rocker, the polar opposite to any of the Dare stuff, and begins with a pounding bass thump before an almighty guitar crashes in and hijacks the rest of the track. It's also an ill-advised political statement, with the middle eastern state of Lebanon being the 80's no go equivalent to today's Iraq. Mind you they've got a point when Phil sings: "And who will have won when the soldiers have gone". In today's climate, twenty years of ahead of its time? (4/5)

**Get It Right This Time**
Another poor bside (again from who knows when) withscant regard for its surroundings and certainly not welcome on this compilation. (2/5)

**Louise**
The last release from Hysteria. A love song of all things, and a plethora of urban/suburban references to boot with libraries, phone boxes and bus stops all getting a mention. There's a wicked three note, one finger synth riff that must have looked good on TOTP back in the day, too. (5/5)

**Kiss The Future**
From Romantic? album a better track than Heart Like A Wheel. I love this song for the title. How very 80's. I was reading an article recently about them and the title of the album, Romantic?, is actually a nod but a rejection to the scene from whence they came. Talk about biting the hand that feeds. (3/5)

**Human**
It took three years for the band to release Hysteria after Dare and further two years before Human's accompanying album, Crash, was with us. It was not a good album and one of the few favours that Best Of does is to acknowledge this and only include this track from Crash. It's another love sing of sorts with the band getting back to epic synth backgrounds and a gorgeous soully keyboard. Not sure about the faux-Yank monologue from the actually deep-Yorkshire inflected Oakey though. (4/5)

**Let's Get Together Again**
This is probably the surprise of the album. A very good track from Romantic? with a thundering bassline that really gets my pulse racing. I have criticised this album constantly, but this is a good track to end on. (4/5)

And the final figures are in. The album comprises material thus:

Actual singles: 9
Bsides: 3
Album tracks: 4

This is not what I would deem a Best Of to feature. OK it's not marketed as The Singles Collection or The Greatest Hits but even a loosely defined Best Of would include all the singles and key album tracks. This delivers neither.

KEY OMISSIONS

**Don't You Want Me**
Only the biggest selling single of 1981.

**Keep Feeling Fascination**
A non album single and their other number two hit.

**Being Boiled**
A 1980 release, but it hit the top ten in 1982 upon re-issue.

**Boys And Girls**
Their first pre-Dare single release.

SO WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES?

Get 2003's The Very Best Of The Human League instead. It features all the top 40 singles from 1981 to 1995 (including Don't You Want Me, Being Boiled and Fascination). It's on the band's label, EMI, whereas this below par one is on Disky (never heard of them). One thing I noticed was that the cover looks remarkably similar to that of Dare and lunchtime rushers like me can be easily fooled.

The Human League have amassed nine HIT albums along with several (like this one!) that got nowhere. For safety, they are:

Travelogue (1980, #16)
Reproduction (1981, #34)
Dare (1981, #1)
Hysteria (1984, #3)
Crash (1986, #7)
Greatest Hits (1988, #3)
Romantic? (1990, #24)
Octopus (1995, #6)

and your friend and mine, the one I should have bought instead:

THE VERY BEST OF THE HUMAN LEAGUE (2003, #24 - oooops!)

 

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Best Of cover