Dare The Human League

“Dare, the album Philip Oakey made with the ruins of a broken band, was a paradigm shift: It signified the end of something old—the original Human League—and the beginning of something new—synth-pop—all at once, a kind of prism that all pop music would soon pass through. The aesthetic and commercial successes of Dare were unrepeatable; the Human League could never be as unaware of the music they were making ever again. It’s the unconsciousness, that not knowing, that makes the record so great, that makes it sound like it’s beamed in from some vast emptiness. It was pop music that resembled the most enduring pop culture in history, things that didn’t know what they were until it was too late—the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe—massively popular figures that were absorbed as images before they were ever accepted as art. In making a record that no one involved could tell if it was any good, they made something unprecedented.” - Brad Nelson, Pitchfork