The Human League are a synth pop band from Sheffield, England, formed in 1977. They generated a string of synthesizer-backed dance pop hits throughout the 80s. David Bowie dubbed the group “the sound of the future” in 1981.

The band is best known for its third studio album released in 1981, Dare! The fourth single from Dare, “Don’t You Want Me,” catapulted to #1 in the UK and US.

Phil Oakey is the only core member of the group. The band’s first incarnation was as an arty all-male synthesizer group, composed of Oakey, Martyn Ware, and Ian Craig Marsh. In the 1980s, Ware and Marsh left the group after continued conflicts with Oakey—they went on to form Heaven 17.

Oakey then recruited two 17-year-old girls, Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall to be background singers and dancers after his then-girlfriend saw them performing a complex routine to Visage’s “Fade To Grey” in a local nightclub. Since 1987, The Human League has remained a trio composed of Oakey, Sulley and Catherall.