Pop Music - The Human League

If a record company asked me to edit a 'best of' The Human League and give my raison d'etre, I think the first thing I'd want to do is emphasise that my choices would be made on the basis of the best songs, rather than those which have been most popular, or are most celebrated for whatever reason. Thus I would leave out 'Don't You Want Me', even though it's THE Human League track for most people, because it just doesn't cut the highest level mustard for me.

Equally, 'Empire State Human' would have to go, because although I quite like its verses, its chorus gives me the willies - of all their prismatic faces, Pogo-League was one of the few failures.

The thing is, The Human League have been consistently fascinating on a pop level for a lot longer than most people think. It didn't all die in 1984. It revived intriguingly around 1990. The fascination does not reside exclusively in The Wire, David Toop, electronica-baby territory. It resides in the crackle on the radio busting out over the washing up - that over and over chorus that hits you between the eyes and sums up a mood, a time, a generation.

In the case of The Human League, of course, it has had phenomenal ups and downs - all the drama of a pop career is there. The stuff which augments legends. The downs in popularity have been very productive seasons for them on the whole, with the exception of the awful time in the mid 80s with Jam and Lewis and the whole 'Crash' debacle.

Since then, though, things have looked up decidedly in the quality stakes. Yes, its a different League, but the pop-WALLOP! is well and truly present at their best. The last album, 'Secrets', hides an example, probably the best. A haunting, misty green song with shades of blushing melancholy called 'Shameless'. As a fellow League enthusiast put it - 'it could have been massive'. The album contained many impressive things but this is the best. As is typical, the album was shrouded in a label-collapse, a stiffed fine single ('All I Ever Wanted') as a result, a desperate attempt at a second single elsewhere, and an awful silence further abroad in our culture which was not deserved. Another dramatic twist in an extraordinary story.

Now they have a new recording contract with Wall of Sound Records and we wait with our breaths well-baited.......

Of course, the centre of it all is THAT voice. Phil Oakey - the voice of a generation, but more importantly perhaps a voice which carries through you, makes a song pound in your head, and gives utterance to something indescribable but wonderful. Our generation should have had more of him - he should always have been on the radio - we'd have had a richer pop culture for it. I can think of many virtually unknown League songs which sound like the hits of a parallel universe, so many examples of things our hearts should be melting over with nostalgia.

So, that said, here it is:

ULTRALEAGUE

1. All I Ever Wanted
2. Being Boiled
3. The Black Hit of Space
4. Filling Up With Heaven
5. Liar
6. Love Action
7. Love Me Madly?
8. Mirror Man
9. Only After Dark
10. Rock'n'Roll / Nightclubbing
11. Shameless
12. The Sound of the Crowd (Full Version)
13. Stay With Me Tonight
14. Tell Me When
15. Things That Dreams are Made Of

There are many contenders for space in this select group; I can already imagine a second volume in turbo-green to match this one's turbo-blue, and fifteen more slices of magic to set the airwaves ringing high and low..........