The Human League

The Human League are an English synth-pop band formed in Sheffield in 1977. Initially an experimental electronic outfit, the group signed to Virgin Records in 1979 and later attained widespread commercial success with their third album Dare in 1981 after restructuring their lineup. The album produced the hit singles “The Sound of the Crowd”, “Love Action (I Believe in Love)”, “Open Your Heart” and the UK and US number one “Don't You Want Me”. The band received the Brit Award for Best British Breakthrough Act in 1982. Further hits followed throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, including the non-album singles “Mirror Man” (1982) and “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” (1983), “The Lebanon” from the album Hysteria (1984), “Human” (a second US number one) from the album Crash (1986) and “Tell Me When” from the album Octopus (1995).

The only constant band member since 1977 has been lead singer Philip Oakey. The original lineup comprised Oakey, synthesizer players Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware, and slide projectionist and visual director Adrian Wright. After releasing their second album Travelogue in 1980, both Marsh and Ware left the band to form Heaven 17. Oakey and Wright assembled a new lineup with singers Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley, bassist/synthesizer player Ian Burden, and guitarist/synthesizer player Jo Callis. Wright, Burden and Callis all left the band by the end of the 1980s, since which time the Human League has essentially been a trio of Oakey, Catherall and Sulley with various sidemen.

The Human League have had six top-20 albums and 13 top-20 singles in the UK and had sold more than 20 million records worldwide by 2010. As an early techno-pop act that received extensive MTV airplay, they are regarded as one of the leading artists of the 1980s Second British Invasion of the US.