The Human League - Hysteria (1984) LP - €10,00

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Hysteria is the fourth studio album by the English synth-pop band the Human League, released on 7 May 1984 by Virgin Records. 

Following the worldwide success of their previous studio album Dare (1981), the band struggled to make a successful follow-up and the sessions for Hysteria were fraught with problems. 

The album title itself is taken from the problematic recording period. 

Producers Martin Rushent and Chris Thomas both left the project which would eventually be finished by producer Hugh Padgham.

Hysteria attained relatively lacklustre success in comparison to its multi-platinum predecessor. 

The Human League, although still regarded as an influential band, had the potential to be absolutely huge. Dare was a massive hit worldwide, a perfect synthesis of experimental electronics and sugary dance-pop. “Don’t You Want Me”, it could be argued, was the defining moment of the entire synth-pop scene, a piece of epic bombast that captures the spirit of the times while transcending it. The band followed this up with two classic singles, “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” and “Mirror Man”, that moved the band even closer to the pop mainstream, whetting appetite for Dare‘s sequel. After a two-year gap, an eternity in the pop landscape of the ’80s, Hysteria finally arrived, and despite some chart success, it effectively ended the Human League’s existence as a dominant musical entity. 

Hysteria, in effect, has been forgotten about in the term’s of the group’s career, treated as sort of a rehashed, watered down Dare.

Oddly enough, Oakey’s growing concession to the pop world was probably what doomed Hysteria to minor league status. Dare‘s success lied with its ability to craft powerful pop songs that had a dark and bleak undercurrent. 

For every “Love Action”, there were songs about “Darkness” and the assassination drama “Seconds”. Hysteria only features one dark song, the guitar-driven “The Lebanon”. 

This stark tale of life during wartime filled with huge drums and soaring guitars, when released as the debut single, alienated the Human League’s core group of fans with its attempt to ape anthemic bands like U2 and the Alarm. Even if it did not go over well with the synth-pop crowd, perhaps because its highly politicized lyrics were so alien to the dance culture Human League appealed to, “The Lebanon” is a clear album highlight, a jolt of serious rock and roll in an album that occasionally dips into cheesiness.

And, yes, a listener can find plenty of head scratching moments of pure cheese on Hysteria, most notably the dance floor wannabe entitled, deep breath here, “Rock Me Again and Again and Again and Again and Again”, where Phillip Oakey, laughingly, attempts to use his detached croon to carry a half-hearted stab of pointless Hi-NRG nonsense. 

The concluding “Don’t You Know I Want You”, which ought to have confused the heck out of dyslexics looking for the album that featured “Don’t You Want Me”, with its pseudo-African rhythms, is perhaps one of the most dreadful songs the League ever recorded, ends the album proper on a flat note. 

However, the rest of the album features the band following the amazing pop smarts that informed “Mirror Man” and “(Keep Feeling) Fascination”, none more so than the lost classic “The Sign”. 

I feel that if “The Sign”, rather than “The Lebanon”, were the lead-off single from Hysteria, the album may have fared better. “The Sign” is pure sugar, it makes “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” sound like “Hurt”, Philip Oakey had always made his intentions known that he wanted to prove that electronics were not just for experimentation but they could be used in the service of pop music. 

Nobody in 1986 needed to be told this, but the shimmering, good time, “everything will be fine” message of “The Sign” should have hammered home the message. It is, in fact, a perfection of the Human League pop formula, capitalizing on beautiful and alien sounds that could only be coaxed out of synthesizers, as well as the powerful tension between Oakey’s deep alienated croaks and the female singers’ naïve chirpiness.

Although the album took a long time to create, Hysteria seems effortless, as if the band could rattle of big hooks and catchy songs at a whim. There isn’t much range on the album, it’s filled mostly with call-and-response pop songs that rely on heavy concentration of choruses (“I’m Coming Back” and “So Hurt” being the best). 

There are two ballads, “Louise” and “Life on Your Own”, which appear mainly because they felt they needed some ballads in the mix, where they sound a little like a rougher version of their Sheffield peers ABC. 

Overall, this is just a simple album, where the band sacrifices the complex arrangements and darker undertones of Dare in order to worship on the altar of Pop Muzik. For the Human League, the shiny, unvarnished, plastic noise of Hysteria represented an artistic step down, but the album still holds up as a beacon of synth-pop bubblegum.

Three singles from the album reached the top 20 of the UK singles chart, and "The Lebanon" was the only single to chart in the United States, peaking at number 64 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart.

The song "Rock Me Again and Again and Again and Again and Again and Again (Six Times)" is a cover version of a 1973 song by Lyn Collins and James Brown. 

"I Love You Too Much" is a substantially remixed version from the EP Fascination! (1983) and "Don't You Know I Want You" is a reworked version of the instrumental B-side "Total Panic!" that appeared on the "(Keep Feeling) Fascination" single in 1983. 

Side A

A1.  I’m Coming Back - 4:11  

        Written-By – Wright, Oakey

A2.  I Love You Too Much  3:26  

        Drum Programming – Martin Rushent

        Written-By – Burden, Callis, Wright

A3.  Rock Me Again & Again & Again & Again & Again & Again (Six Times) - 3:31  

        Written-By -  J. Brown, L. Austin

A4.  Louise - 4:57  

        Written-By – Callis, Wright, Oakey

A5.  The Lebanon - 5:04  

        Written-By – Callis, Oakey

Side B

B1.  Betrayed - 4:06  

        Written-By – Wright, Oakey

B2.  The Sign - 3:48  

        Drum Programming – Jim Russell, Martin Rushent

        Written-By – Burden, Callis, Wright

B3.  So Hurt - 3:52  

        Drum Programming – Martin Rushent

        Written-By – Burden, Oakey

B4.  Life On Your Own - 4:07  

        Written-By – Callis, Wright, Oakey

B5.  Don’t You Know I Want You - 3:10 

        Drum Programming – Martin Rushent

        Written-By – Burden, Callis, Wright

Companies, etc.

• Copyright © – A&M Records
• Licensed From – Virgin Records Ltd.
• Recorded At – The Town House
• Recorded At – Air Studios
• Mastered At – Masterdisk

Credits

• Bass, Keyboards, Guitar – Ian C. Burden
• Engineer – Bill Price, Gavin McKillop, Renate Blauel
• Engineer [Assistant] – David Motion, Jeremy Allom, Paul "Croydon" Cook, Steve Jackson
• Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals – Jo Callis
• Keyboards [Occasional] – Philip Adrian Wright
• Layout – Ken Ansell
• Lyrics By – Philip Adrian Wright (tracks: A2, B4), Philip Oakey (tracks: A1, A4 to B5)
• Management – Bob Last
• Mastered By – Howie Weinberg
• Mixed By, Producer, Engineer – Hugh Padgham
• Photography By – Simon Fowler
• Producer – Chris Thomas
• Programmed By, Performer [Played], Percussion [Percussed], Vocals [Sung], Producer – The Human League
• Vocals – Joanne Catherall, Susanne Sulley
• Vocals, Programmed By, Keyboards – Philip Oakey

Artwork

• Simon Fowler – photography
• Ken Ansell – layout

Notes

Release:  1984

Format:  LP, Vinyl

Genre:  Synth-pop

Label:  Virgin

Catalog#  206307

Vinyl:  Goed (VG)

Cover:  Goed (VG)  Gatefold

Prijs: €10,00