Songoftheday 10/6/19 - Kelly took a lifetime searching for the bottom line, I wasn't into searching 'cause I was doing fine...
from the album Octopus (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #31 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5
Today's song of the day comes from the British new wave group the Human League, who had entered the 1990s returning to their electronica roots (as well as with producer Martin Rushent) for the bubbly dancepop of "Heart Like A Wheel", which reached the American pop top-40 in the fall of 1990. However, the moderate success wasn't enough for their label Virgin Records, who dumped them shortly after. It took four years for the trio of Philip Oakey, Joanne Catherall, and Susan Ann Sulley to recover from this professional loss, and eventually were signed to EastWest Records, where they recorded their seventh studio album Octopus with producer Ian Stanley, formerly the keyboardist of Tears For Fears. The lead single from the set was "Tell Me When", a bouncy synth-dance number written by Oakey with Paul Christopher Beckett. After its initial big success in the UK, the song made its way on American shores...
"Tell Me When" became the Human League's sixth and so-far final top-40 pop hit in America in April of 1995. The song also climbed to #39 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, while the remixes on the CD single helped it rise to #15 on their Dance Club Play list. Internationally, "Tell Me When" was a big comeback for them in their native England, rising to #6 in the holiday season, while reaching the top-40 in the Netherlands (#5), Ireland (#9), Canada (#17), Belgium (#21), and Iceland (#27). The second single from Octopus, "One Man In My Heart", was sung by Sulley and scored a second top-40 British hit at #13, while climbing to #29 in Ireland. A third offering, "Filling Up With Heaven", scaled to #36 on the British chart.
With the renewed momentum, the League embarked on a tour, and re-released their Greatest Hits album, and a re-released version of their breakthrough hit "Don't You Want Me" went to #16 in the UK, while new original song "Stay With Me Tonight" nicked the British top-40 at #40. In 2001, they returned with another indie-released album, Secrets, which has their most recent singles chart hit, "All I Ever Wanted", which got to #47 in the UK. Ten years later, with a lot of successful touring in between, and the Human League's most recent album Credo was released, reaching #44 on the British albums sales chart, despite the single "Night People" failing to chart (a shame, its a jam).
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Here's the Human League appearing on Top of the Pops...
And finally live in 2012...
Up tomorrow: A rhythmic diva has run out of romance.
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