For the month of November, I’ll be selecting songs in conjunction with the music Twitter challenge: #WelcomeToTheOccupation.

The casual music fan in the U.S. knows The Human League by one song: “Don’t You Want Me”. Sure, there were other singles during their pop phase that were better – “(Keep Feeling) Fascination”, “The Lebanon”, “Love Action”, among others. More serious fans realize that the early years were the best. Darker and more experimental – “Being Boiled” and “Empire State Human” were some of the standouts. When you look at what the band accomplished early on, it’s easy to make fun of “Don’t You Want Me”. But I like to think of it as my guilty pleasure.

Cheesy Casiotone-like synth riffs. Cheesy lyrics. Cheesy vocal baton pass. And I love every second of it. “Don’t You Want Me” is a time capsule of “such good times”. It dominated on MTV, turning eighties kids like me on to The Human League. These days, it’s a song that carries so much nostalgia with it because it has not stood the test of time at all. We crank it up in the car & queue it up on the karaoke list because it brings us back.

“I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, that much is true.”