"Tell me again, why do we sound like Janet Jackson?"
"Crash" was The Human League's sixth album, and probably the one all bandmembers of that time would like to forget really quickly.
It's not that it didn't sell, on the contrary.
It's not that it didn't have an international Mega Number One. On the contrary.
The problem was: it wasn't really a Human League album.
After the success of Dare and Hysteria, Jo Collis, keyboarder and guitarist and writer of a lot of their material since 1981 left the band while recording the new album in early 1985, leaving a bit of a creative space in the lineup. Additionally to that, singer Phil Oakey was doing his own thing with master of schmaltzy europop, Giorgio Moroder, recording for the soundtrack of every geeks favourite eighties movie "Electric Dreams". Nevertheless, back in Sheffield, they started writing again, just to annouce a bit later that they would rather release a remix album of their last record, "Hysteria". Writing and recording ground to a halt, when producer Colin Thurston walked out on them, and the music press started to write obituaries, just in case.
What nobody expected at this moment was Virgin's insistence on getting something for their money: After bankrolling the recording of the new album so far, they wanted to see some results, and someone suggested to try it with R&B's star producer team of Janet Jackson, SOS Band, Prince and Alexander o'Neal: Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis of Flyte Time Productions. Oakey, who liked their worked was apparently enthusiastic, and one day the band was flown to Minneapolis to present the work so far to Jam and Lewis.
Unfortunately, Jam and Lewis didn't like the result. At all.
They started recording all over again:
For four months Jam and Lewis tried to turn the Human League into an R&B outfit, but to no avail: they just couldn't sing as pitch perfect as requested (anyone who's ever been to one of their concerts can vouchsafe for that) and Philip Adrian Wright's keyboard skills were too machinistic for a Jam/Lewis production, preferring a less slick approach to playing and sequenced patterns, which were a "nono" for Flyte Time, so he started playing table tennis during the recording sessions.
So it ended badly: The League packed their bags and let Flyte Time Productions finish their album with sesson musicians and additional vocal talent. The two hugely successful single releases, "Human" and "Love is all that matters" were completely penned by Flyte Time and probably din't have any League musicians on them (apart from the vocals).
Tracklisting:
- Money
- Swang
- Human
- Jam
- Are you ever coming back?
- I need your loving
- Party
- Love on the run
- The real thing
- Love is all that matters
Funnily the album was a huge, worldwide success, but it's certainly not the League's favourite.
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