Trivia / Dare

• Breakthrough Hit: Dare was their first mainstream success after several years as a cult band. As for specific songs, "The Sound of the Crowd" was their breakthrough in the U.K., and "Don't You Want Me" was the band's first hit in the U.S.
• Executive Meddling: Virgin Records pushed for "Don't You Want Me" to be the album's last single against the wishes of Phil Oakey, who viewed it as Album Filler (hence why it was the closer). It ended up becoming the band's American Breakthrough Hit.
• Late Export for You: The album wasn't released in the United States until a year after its UK release, owed to the limited success of Reproduction and Travelogue leading Virgin Records to wait and see if Dare sold well enough in its home territory.
• Trailer Delay: The band wrote "Boys and Girls" and "I Am the Law" at the same time and performed them both in late 1980. Both songs are noted for their extreme minimalism, due to the band not having access to the synths and drum machines used by the departed Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh. The label wanted a single to pay off the band's debts, so the band picked "Boys and Girls" (which came out as a non-LP single in February 1981), and the band saved "I Am the Law" for their next album, which eventually became Dare, coming out 8 months later in October 1981. In the ensuing months, the band changed to a noticeably lusher, poppier style— and "I Am the Law" sticks out like a sore thumb as a result. It would have fit on either of the band's first two albums.
• Troubled Production: Dare had a much more troublesome production than Reproduction and Travelogue, which were flops.
  • The band's two lead members, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, left the band in 1980 and formed a new group, Heaven 17. The press pretty much declared The Human League dead right there, as the only two members left were the ones that they perceived had the least to do with the band's musical direction: vocalist Philip Oakey and visual artist Adrian Wright. To add insult to injury, the band was already in crippling debt and Virgin Records was looking to drop them, but they still owed another album to the label.
  • Oakey recruited two local teenage singers, Susanne Sulley and Joanne Catherall, to sing for the group and recruited keyboardist Ian Burden to round out the band. Oakey went on tour with this lineup, with Sulley and Catherall not intended as full members of the group. The tour was poorly received by the band's old fans, who heckled them at pretty much every concert. However, Oakey and Wright were so impressed by Sulley and Catherall's professionalism, that they made them full band members.
  • When the new iteration of the Human League arrived at the studio to record their new album, they discovered that the artist in the adjacent studio was, of all bands, Heaven 17. The toxic atmosphere between the two bands led the Human League to book a new studio outside of their native Sheffield, which resulted in the still-underage Sulley and Catheral having to frequently take bus trips back to the city to attend school.
  • While still working on the album, the band issued the single "The Sound of the Crowd", which Virgin reluctantly promoted, only to see it become their first Top 40 hit. Virgin then asked for two more singles, again before the album was even finished, causing some stress with the recording process. Virgin's idea paid off: "Love Action (I Believe In Love)" and "Open Your Heart" were even bigger hits, both reaching the Top 10. Around this time, guitarist Jo Callis was added as the band's sixth and final member late in to the album's production.
  • When Dare was finally released in October 1981, it was a massive smash for both the band and label...but Virgin still wanted one more single, and picked "Don't You Want Me". Oakey begged them not to release it because he thought it was the worst song on the album. They rebuffed him, and he was sure the song would embarrass the band and ruin the career they worked so hard to rebuild. He didn't need to worry: In a rare case of Executive Meddling gone right, "Don't You Want Me" was the biggest of all of their hits, a #1 in both the UK and the US, and one of the most popular and iconic songs of the 80s New Wave Music movement.

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