The Human League: The Very Best Of : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Despite frontman Phil Oakey's ridiculous lopsided hairdo and the presence of two northern England disco dollies who could neither dance nor sing, the Human League defined Eighties New Romantic cool. The band's 1982 trans-Atlantic smash, "Don't You Want Me" -- driven by devilish techno beats, Oakey's distinctive droll baritone, and its killer blue-collar refrain, "You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar" -- established the League as leaders of the synth-pop revolution. The track was also the blueprint for 1981's Dare, the League's best album and an underrated classic of the post-punk era. As the largely forgettable second part of this collection attests, the League never again lived up to Dare's prescience; their later brand of electro-trash doomed them to Eighties revival tours. Although the analog-synth grooves sound strangely primitive now, Very Best proves that the pop purism of early gems such as "The Sound of the Crowd" and "Love Action" will never be outmoded.