Songoftheday 4/29/12 - You were working as a waitress at a cocktail bar...

The Human League - "Don't You Want Me"

from the album Dare (1982)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (three weeks)

weeks in top-40: 21

Today's Song of the Day was the harbinger of the second "British" wave of the 80's, and the first bonified electronic #1 pop hit.

The Human League started out as a purely electro-art rock group by keyboardists Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh in the late 70's. They recruited singer Philip Oakey (their original unavailable choice Glenn Gregory went on to front Heaven 17), and released two records that got some success in the burgeoning new wave movement along with contemporaries Depeche Mode and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. However, conflicts on where the band's music split the group, with Ware and Marsh abandonning the League because it was going too pop-leaning to form Heaven 17, which ironically became just as pop-inflected as the other.

On their third album, Dare, Oakey brought in two female voices to their sound, in the form of school-age girls Susan Sulley and Joanne Catherall. Employing producer Martin Rushent, whose pop-music studio experience with such diverse acts as Fleetwood Mac and the Buzzcocks influenced the album's accessibility, the group focused on producing an electronic album that squarely fit in mainstream radio.

"Don't You Want Me" was actually released as the fourth single in the UK, after three consecutive top-20 hits including the #3 "Love Action (I Believe In Love)". Oakey has stated that he hated the finshed track, and protested its original release. However the song obviously found a home in the hearts and radio of Britain and America, as it became a worldwide success, giving them a number-one hit in the States on their first try.

"Don't You Want Me" turned out to be the only top-40 hit from Dare, though the group went on to score more hits throughout the 80s and 90s, including their second transformation under Janet Jackson/Time producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis giving them their second #1 in 1986, "Human". Reduced to the trio of Oakey, Sulley, and Catherall along with backing musicians, the League continue to tour in the UK.

In 1988, the song got the "Stock Aitken Waterman" treatment with the Pete Hammond produced version by singer Mandy...

And in 2002 Swedish camp-dance group Alcazar offered up their version which made the US dance chart top-30, The video's pretty fun...

And finally, in one of Glee's jump-the-shark episodes where Blaine questions his sexuality, Darren Criss and Lea Michele put out the Kidz Bop-esque cover.

Up tomorrow: Elton's other postmortem tribute.