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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 contained four hit singles, including the UK/US number one hit "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 " Mirror Man", "(Keep Feeling) Fascination", " The Lebanon", "Human" (a second US No. 1) and " Tell Me When". The only constant band member since 1977 has been lead singer and songwriter Philip Oakey. Keyboard players Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh both left the band in 1980 to form Heaven 17. Under Oakey's leadership, the Human League then evolved into a commercially successful new pop band,Harvel, Jess"Now That's What I Call New Pop!".Pitchfork Medi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its southern suburbs were transferred from Derbyshire to the city council. It is the largest settlement in South Yorkshire. The city is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines and the valleys of the River Don with its four tributaries: the Loxley, the Porter Brook, the Rivelin and the Sheaf. Sixty-one per cent of Sheffield's entire area is green space and a third of the city lies within the Peak District national park. There are more than 250 parks, woodlands and gardens in the city, which is estimated to contain around 4.5 million trees. The city is south of Leeds, east of Manchester, and north of Nottingham. Sheffield played a crucial role in the Industrial Revolution, with many significant inventions an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis
James Samuel "Jimmy Jam" Harris III (born June 6, 1959) and Terry Steven Lewis (born November 24, 1956) are an American R&B/pop songwriting and record production team. They have enjoyed great success since the 1980s with various artists, most notably Janet Jackson. They have written 31 top ten hits in the UK and 41 in the US. In 2022, the duo were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Musical Excellence category. History Jimmy Jam is the son of Cornbread Harris, a Minneapolis blues and jazz musician. Jimmy Jam met Lewis while he was a student at Washburn High School in Minneapolis. They did not meet in class, however, but while attending a TRIO Upward Bound program on the University of Minnesota campus. Harris formed or joined an 11 piece band called Mind & Matter. Later came Flyte Tyme, which evolved into the Time. In 1981, they were joined by Morris Day and toured with Prince as his opening act. As members of the Time, they played instruments on all but o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brit Award
The BRIT Awards (often simply called the BRITs) are the British Phonographic Industry's annual popular music awards. The name was originally a shortened form of "British", "Britain", or "Britannia" (in the early days the awards were sponsored by Britannia Music Club), but subsequently became a backronym for British Record Industry Trusts Show. In addition, an equivalent awards ceremony for classical music, called the Classic BRIT Awards, is held in May. The awards were first held in 1977 and originated as an annual event in 1982 under the auspices of the British record industry's trade association, the BPI. In 1989, they were renamed The BRIT Awards. Mastercard has been the long-term sponsor of the event. The highest profile music awards ceremony in the UK, the BRIT Awards have featured some of the most notable events in British popular culture, such as the final public appearance of Freddie Mercury, the Jarvis Cocker protest against Michael Jackson, the height of a high- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don't You Want Me
"Don't You Want Me" is a song by British synthpop group the Human League (credited on the cover as The Human League 100). It was released on 27 November 1981 as the fourth single from their third studio album, ''Dare'' (1981). The band's best known and most commercially successful song, it was the biggest selling UK single of 1981, that year's Christmas number one, and has since sold over 1,560,000 copies in the UK, making it the 23rd-most successful single in UK Singles Chart history. It topped the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 in the US on 3 July 1982, where it stayed for three weeks. In November 1983, ''Rolling Stone'' named it the "breakthrough song" of the Second British Invasion of the US. In 2015, the song was voted by the British public as the nation's seventh-favourite 1980s number one in a poll for ITV. And in 2022, ''Rolling Stone'' ranked it one of the ''200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time''. Background The lyrics were inspired after lead singer Philip Oakey read a ph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dare (album)
''Dare'' (released as ''Dare!'' in the United States) is the third studio album by English synth-pop band The Human League, first released in the United Kingdom in October 1981 then subsequently in the US in mid-1982. The album was recorded between March and September 1981 following the departure of founding members Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, and saw the band shift direction from their previous avant-garde electronic style toward a more pop-friendly, commercial sound led by frontman Philip Oakey. ''Dare'' became critically acclaimed and has proved to be a genre-defining album, whose influence can be felt in many areas of pop music. The album and its four singles were large successes, particularly "Don't You Want Me". The album reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and has been certified triple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). A remix album based on ''Dare'', ''Love and Dancing'', was released in 1982. History In January 1981, the Human League ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Musical ensemble, bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as Compact disc, CDs replaced LP record, LPs as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he researched using metadata to create a musi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synth-pop
Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic, art rock, disco, and particularly the Krautrock of bands like Kraftwerk. It arose as a distinct genre in Japan and the United Kingdom in the post-punk era as part of the new wave movement of the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used practically in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, and the mid-1970s saw the rise of electronic art musicians. After the breakthrough of Gary Numan in the UK Singles Chart in 1979, large numbers of artists began to enjoy success with a synthesizer-based sound in the early 1980s. In Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestra introduced the TR-808 rhythm machine to popular music, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ian Burden
Ian Charles Burden (born 24 December 1957) is an English musician who played keyboards and bass guitar with The Human League, initially as a session musician, and later full-time, between 1981 and 1987. He attended The King's School in Peterborough, as a boarding pupil, where he played in several amateur bands. Formerly of Sheffield band Graph, Burden was employed as a session keyboard player for the Human League's October 1980 tour, covering for Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh's keyboards after their departure. In March 1981 he returned to the band full-time, and would co-write much of their early 1980s material. He left the band in 1987. Burden recorded a solo album, ''Loot'', in 1990. In 1995, Burden released a CD through Inertia Records entitled ''A Swim in the Ocean''. This was a collaboration with Human League session player and contributor Russell Dennett. The band called themselves Deep Down Crazy, and consisted of Dan Boulton on vocals, Chris Broadhead on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Adrian Wright
Philip Adrian Wright (born 30 June 1956) is an English musician, also known as Adrian Wright. Wright had studied film making at Sheffield Art College and was a friend of Philip Oakey. In 1978, he was invited to join the new avant-garde electronic band The Human League which consisted of Oakey, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh Ian Craig Marsh (born 11 November 1956) is an English musician and composer. He was a founding member of the electronic band the Human League, writing and playing on their first two albums and several singles, until leaving in 1980 to form the .... Then a non-musician, Wright was appointed as 'Director of Visuals' whose job was to provide lighting and slideshows to accompany the Human League's live concerts. When the Human League split in October 1980, Wright sided with Oakey, while Ware and Marsh left to form Heaven 17 - as such, he became a musician in his own necessity, and he quickly learned keyboards. He and Oakey co-wrote some of the new Human ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martyn Ware
Martyn Ware (born 19 May 1956) is an English musician, composer, arranger, record producer, and music programmer. As a founding member of both the Human League and Heaven 17, Ware was partly responsible for hit songs such as "Being Boiled" and "Temptation". Ware has also worked as a record producer, notably helping to revitalise Tina Turner's career in 1983 with " Let's Stay Together", kick starting Terence Trent D'Arby's career by co-producing his solo debut, '' Introducing the Hardline According to...'' in 1987 and producing Erasure's ''I Say I Say I Say'' album in 1994. He is also noted for work in surround sound technology and, more recently, for creation of sound installations. Early years Ware was born and grew up in Sheffield, England. After leaving King Edward VII School, he worked in the computer industry. With his first wages, he bought a Korg 700 monophonic keyboard and started experimenting with electronic sound. Music career The Human League In the 1970s, Ware an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ian Craig Marsh
Ian Craig Marsh (born 11 November 1956) is an English musician and composer. He was a founding member of the electronic band the Human League, writing and playing on their first two albums and several singles, until leaving in 1980 to form the British Electric Foundation and later Heaven 17. Musical career Marsh began in music at Sheffield's council-sponsored community theatre group Meatwhistle. There he met Mark Civico; they formed a performance art band called Musical Vomit, taking the name from a music paper's hostile review of the band Suicide.Blind Youth: The early work of the Human League Ex-rental.com, (archived) Musical Vomit specialised in |
Susan Ann Sulley
Susan Ann Sulley (born 22 March 1963), formerly known as Susanne Sulley and Susan Ann Gayle, is an English singer who is one of the two female vocalists in the synth-pop band The Human League. Born and raised in Sheffield, England, as a schoolgirl in 1980, Sulley (aged 17) and her friend Joanne Catherall were "discovered" in the Crazy Daisy Nightclub in Sheffield by Philip Oakey, the lead singer and a founding member of The Human League. They soon were asked to provide full vocals by Oakey as an experiment. Sulley is a joint business partner in the band, which still records and performs. The Human League has dominated Sulley's life; she has been a singer all her adult life and has never had any other full-time job. She explains: "Joanne and I weren't ambitious; we didn't want to be in a pop group. We were just two girls at school who wanted to go to university." Early life and education Sulley was born in Sheffield, UK, on 22 March 1963. She spent all her early years in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
