"DON'T YOU WANT ME" THE HUMAN LEAGUE (1981)

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.”

"THE LEBANON" THE HUMAN LEAGUE (1984)

For the month of October, I’m taking the #OctAtoZBandChallenge challenge. The premise is simple. Pick a band starting with the day’s assigned alphabet letter and then choose a song from that band.

Day 8

When music fans think of The Human League, some of the first traits that undoubtedly come up are Phil Oakey’s princely vocals, the shimmery synth chops and the call-and-response duo of Oakey and Sulley. Most fans don’t think of scorching guitar riffs or political statements first. But that’s what we have with “The Lebanon”, the lowest-charting single from the band in the U.S., which also failed to achieve the same success as the Dare singles. It is my favorite Human League song by far.

“The Lebanon” flies in the face of conventional synth-pop music. It’s dominated by that incendiary guitar riff, relegating the synth chords to a rhythmic role. The song looks back at the Lebanese civil war. It feels like the cities are on fire when you play the track. While synthesizers and Oakey’s vocals and songwriting gave The Human League its identity, its songs like “The Lebanon” that make me wonder what could’ve been had the band experimented a bit more on guitar.

“He left his home the week before. He thought he'd be like the police. But now he finds he is at war. Weren't we supposed to keep the peace.”