Dare (retitled Dare! in certain territories), released in 1981 through Virgin Records, is the third studio album by English Synth-Pop group The Human League and the debut album of the band's "Mk. II" incarnation. Following the release of Travelogue the previous year, the band found themselves torn apart by Creative Differences over how to deal with their lack of commercial success compared to Gary Numan, of whom they had grown envious for his own mainstream breakthrough with Replicas and The Pleasure Principle in 1979. Vocalist Philip Oakey pushed to have the band adopt a more pop-friendly style in the vein of their pseudonymous disco single "I Don't Depend On You" (which the band released as "The Men"), while Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh were adamant on staying true to the electronic experimentalism they were already known for; these Creative Differences ultimately resulted in Ware & Marsh quitting the band before they were due to tour for Travelogue.
Band manager Bob Last ultimately got the two parties to agree to simply continue their work as two separate but related bands, with Oakey keeping the Human League name and Ware & Marsh forming Heaven 17 with new singer Glenn Gregory. However, while this did resolve any legal troubles over band trademarks in advance, it meant that Oakey now had to handle all of the Human League's prior debts and commitments, including the Travelogue tour, which he was now forced to continue under threat of lawsuits from promoters. Thus, Oakey hastily cobbled together a new lineup consisting of high schoolers Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall, veteran musician Ian Burden, and Mk. I visual director Philip Adrian Wright. The Travelogue tour thus went ahead as planned, but the new lineup— especially the presence of Sulley and Catherall— resulted in derision from fans and critics, who felt that the band were now doomed to die out without the musical direction of Ware and Marsh. This, combined with mounting debts to their label, Virgin Records, resulted in a new push to start putting out actual studio recordings to back up the Mk. II incarnation's legitimacy. Oakey and Wright thus hastily cobbled together "Boys and Girls", a brief continuation of the Dark Wave style of the earlier lineup, and while it restored Virgin's confidence in the band (despite only peaking at No. 47 on the UK Singles chart), both they and Oakey realized that it still wasn't coming close to what any of them wanted out of the band.
Enter producer Martin Rushent, commissioned by Virgin to help polish up the band's sound and make them more commercially viable in a rapidly-changing musical landscape. Rushent moved the band away from Monumental Studios in Sheffield, which they had shared with Heaven 17 (thus creating a hostile working environment for both acts), to Genetic Studios in Reading, Berkshire to start testing out their ability to work together. Rushent instigated a new approach to the band's sound with the single, trading out the foreboding experimentalism of the Mk. I incarnation for a slicker style that simultaneously subverted itself by sounding meticulously calculated, as if riffing on pop music's own reputation as manufactured. The single that came out of their efforts, "The Sound of the Crowd", ended up becoming the band's first Top 40 hit in the UK, peaking at No. 12. Things became even more fortunate with the group's next single, "Love Action (I Believe in Love)", which peaked at No. 3, giving Virgin enough confidence to greenlight a full-length album.
In the end, the album topped the charts in the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway and becoming the third best-selling album of the year in Britain, making it Virgin's first chart-topping album in the UK since Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield (which was the label's very first release in 1973). As the band's first album on their new US label A&M Records, belatedly released in 1982, it also peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and became the 29th best-selling album of 1982 in the States, readily establishing the band as pop forerunners on both sides of the Pond and altogether acting as the band's mainstream Breakthrough Hit. The album would later be certified triple-platinum in Britain, platinum in Canada and New Zealand, and gold in the United States.
Dare was supported by four singles: "The Sound of the Crowd", "Love Action (I Believe in Love)", "Open Your Heart", and "Don't You Want Me", the latter of which became the band's most successful release (despite Oakey's initial reluctance to put it out as a single) and Virgin's first chart-topping single. "The Things That Dreams Are Made Of" would also see release as a single in 2008 in the wake of the band's 25th anniversary tour for the album.
Tracklist:
Side One- "The Things That Dreams Are Made Of" (4:14)
- "Open Your Heart" (3:53)
- "The Sound of the Crowd" (3:56)
- "Darkness" (3:56)
- "Do or Die" (5:25)
Side Two
- "Get Carter" (1:02)
- "I Am the Law" (4:09)
- "Seconds" (4:59)
- "Love Action (I Believe in Love)" (4:58)
- "Don't You Want Me" (3:56)
Your knuckles trope as your fingers curl:
- Age-Gap Romance: Unintentionally depicted on "Don't You Want Me" thanks to co-vocalist Susan Ann Sulley being only 17 and still in high school when the song was recorded, while Philip Oakey was 25 at the time and turned 26 just before the album's release. That said, as the relationship between their characters in the song is depicted as highly toxic, it acts as more of a condemnation of this trope.
- Album Title Drop: "The Things That Dreams Are Made Of" features the line "do all the things you've ever dared," while "Open Your Heart" drops the line "dare to feel" at multiple points.
- Alternate Album Cover: LP copies with the Dare! title move the four portraits from the original gatefold so that they're all displayed on the front cover, with the two pictures from the inner sleeve being shifted over to the back, as a means of saving money by using a standard LP sleeve. Interestingly, despite vinyl becoming more of an afterthought in the region by 1982 (thanks to the emergence of the Sony Walkman in 1979 and its popularization of pre-recorded cassettes), US releases keep the gatefold packaging, and thus the original version of the album art.
- Anti-Love Song: "Don't You Want Me", an argument between a Svengali-like mentor and a female protegee/lover who's finally become fed up with his dominating, entitled nature.
- Breather Episode: "Love Action (I Believe in Love)" acts as this for the album's second side, being an upbeat radio-friendly hit sandwiched within a group of darker tracks.
- Call-Back: On the "Love Action" 12", the song is preceded by "Hard Times", which segues into it— hence the line "I've had some hard times in the past" (which also samples that song).
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: During promotion for this album, the band introduced an ultimately-short-lived labeling system where they denoted their singles as "red" or "blue," be it through the color of the logotype or a worded label; red singles denoted dance tracks, while blue singles were pop.
- Color Motif: White, extending to the cover art and LP labels alike.
- Design Student's Orgasm: The fashion magazine-inspired cover was the Trope Codifier for Synth-Pop albums having stark, minimalist artwork, along with the Bauhaus-inspired Architecture and Morality released the same year.
- Distinct Double Album: Single-LP variant: side one focuses mostly on upbeat songs aside from the Unexpectedly Dark Episode "Darkness", while side two focuses on darker and more brooding tracks with the exception of Breather Episode "Love Action (I Believe in Love)".
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Invoked on the cover art, a cropped photo of Philip Oakey's face in effeminate makeup. In live performances, he had already introduced his asymmetrical long haircut as well, which he would quickly drop before briefly bringing it back in 1990.
- Entitled to Have You: This is the viewpoint of the male character in "Don't You Want Me", acting like his protegee deserves to be his lover as a way of returning the favor of him having brought her to fame. At the end of the first verse, he threatens her with bringing her back down to her old position as a cocktail bar waitress.
- Face on the Cover: The album art features cropped photos of each of the band members; according to Philp Oakey, the cropping was done specifically to hide the band's hair styles, which he felt would be the first aspects of their visual presentation to become dated over the years.
- Fading into the Next Song: "Get Carter", "I Am the Law", and "Seconds" all segue directly into one another, giving the illusion of a single, unbroken piece.
- Female Empowerment Song: "Don't You Want Me" can very easily be read as one, silently praising the female protegee for standing up to her abusive mentor and implying that she'll succeed in her efforts to break away from him.
- Grief Song: "Seconds" is a belated one for slain US president John F. Kennedy.
- Hell Is That Noise: "Get Carter" consists entirely of a shrill, high-pitched synth tune as a prelude to "I Am the Law".
- Last Note Nightmare: Fitting its focus on the Kennedy assassination, "Seconds" closes out with a cacophonous series of synthesized police sirens.
- Leaving You to Find Myself: "Don't You Want Me" is about this situation from the dumpee's POV, but unlike most examples of this trope, he isn't taking it well.When you think you've changed your mind
You had better change it back or we will both be sorry! - Lighter and Softer: Dare abandoned the ominous, borderline industrial sound and bleak, imposing lyrics of their previous works for a radio-friendly electronic pop sound and a mostly lighthearted lyrical style, with darker tracks being treated as more of an exception than the norm (despite making up almost all of side two).
- List Song: "The Things That Dreams Are Made Of" features the narrator listing off a number of expensive vacation spots and luxuries that he feels everyone should be able to experience at some point in their lives.
- Love Is Like Religion: Played with on "Love Action (I Believe In Love)", where the singer states that "there's no Lord above" during the rap break but deems his love for the song's subject a worthy substitute.
- Market-Based Title: Releases in some territories rename the album Dare! Common legend states that the name was devised specifically for A&M Records' US release of the album, but that actually kept the UK name, with the only US release to sport the Dare! title being a 1997 CD reissue. Reportedly, the minor name change was done to differentiate domestic releases in affected areas from import copies, though that story also falls apart when some UK reissues adopted the Dare! title anyways.
- Miniscule Rocking: "Get Carter" clocks in at just barely over a minute, owing to it being more of an introduction for "I Am the Law".
- Money Song: "The Things that Dreams Are Made Of" is an ode to being rich enough to go on lavish vacations, with the narrator wishing that everyone would have enough cash to spend on them.
- New Sound Album: Hugely so, shifting the band from experimental Dark Wave to slick, (mostly) upbeat pop.
- One-Word Title: Dare, "Darkness", "Seconds".
- Packaged as Other Medium: The album cover is designed to look like a high-end fashion magazine, reflecting the slick, glossy style of the music.
- Pygmalion Plot: "Don't You Want Me" gives a dark spin on this trope. The song is a duet between an obsessive mentor and his young protégé, who he met when she was working in a cocktail bar. Over the course of the mentorship, he fell in love with her, but views her as a possession rather than a person and grows angry when she decides to live independently of him, threatening to harm her should she leave.
- Rags to Riches: The male character in "Don't You Want Me" boasts about having turned his protegee from "a waitress in a cocktail bar" to a famous actress.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: "Seconds" is a rumination on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, co-writer Philip Adrian Wright having long been fascinated by the late president's life and legacy.
- Re-Cut: 8-track releases of the album move "Don't You Want Me" to track 5 and move "Do or Die" to track 9 in order to fit the format's four-program configuration. Additionally, "The Sound of the Crowd" is split into two parts due to it overlapping with the changeover between programs 1 and 2.
- Shout-Out:
- "The Things That Dreams Are Made Of" name-drops Johnny, Joey, and Dee-Dee Ramone from The Ramones.
- The songs "Darkness", "Get Carter", "I Am the Law", and "Seconds" are all homages to the Mk. I era of the band, refitted through the sleeker lens of the Mk. II lineup. "I Am the Law" in fact originated during the Mk. I era before being repurposed for this album.
- "Get Carter" and "I Am the Law" themselves are respectively named and themed after the film Get Carter and the comic book series Judge Dredd.
- Furthermore, the decision to have "Get Carter", "I Am the Law", and "Seconds" all flow into one another nods back to a technique used by Japanese Synth-Pop band Yellow Magic Orchestra on their first two albums, Yellow Magic Orchestra and Solid State Survivor (with the placement on side two mirroring YMO's debut). YMO had long been an influence on the Human League, and the two would later collaborate on a 1993 EP appropriately titled YMO Versus the Human League.
- "Love Action (I Believe in Love)" is named after Lou Reed's "I Believe in Love" and references him during the rap break as "the old man." Additionally, the line "but this is Phil talking" is a nod to the line "Jesus, this is Iggy" in Iggy Pop's "Turn Blue".
- Siamese Twin Songs: "Get Carter", "I Am the Law", and "Seconds" all segue into one another and focus on a unifying concept of crime and punishment.
- Singer Name Drop: Phil Oakey sneaks in the line "but this is Phil talking" midway through "Love Action (I Believe in Love)".
- Soprano and Gravel: The baritone Philip Oakey duets with Susan Ann Sulley on "Don't You Want Me".
- The Svengali: "Don't You Want Me" focuses on a feud between one and his increasingly rebellious protegee.
- Title-Only Chorus: "Don't You Want Me", with "baby" and "oooooh" thrown in for good measure.
- Updated Re-release: Twice during the 21st century.
- In 2002, Dare was reissued in both a standard Vanilla Edition package and a digibook edition that added in the Love and Dancing Remix Album as bonus material (similarly to the rarities collections on the Mk. I CDs). The dual release acted as a prelude to the remastering of the band's other 1979-1986 albums the following year, with the full catalog being advertised on the standard edition's tray inlay.
- In 2012, the album was reissued as a small Boxed Set containing both it (with various remixes tacked onto the end as bonus tracks) and the Fascination! EP.
- Vocal Tag Team: Frontman Philip Oakey duets with Susan Ann Sulley on "Don't You Want Me".
- A Wild Rapper Appears!: Philip Oakey performs a rap bridge on "Love Action (I Believe in Love)".
