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Dare (Music)

 Dare (Music)
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 Dare (retitled Dare! in certain territories), released in 1981 through Virgin Records, is the third studio album by English Synth-Pop group The Human League and the debut album of the band's "Mk. II" incarnation. Following the release of Travelogue the previous year, the band found themselves torn apart by Creative Differences over how to deal with their lack of commercial success compared to Gary Numan, of whom they had grown envious for his own mainstream breakthrough with Replicas and The Pleasure Principle in 1979. Vocalist Philip Oakey pushed to have the band adopt a more pop-friendly style in the vein of their pseudonymous disco single "I Don't Depend On You" (which the band released as "The Men"), while Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh were adamant on staying true to the electronic experimentalism they were already known for; these Creative Differences ultimately resulted in Ware & Marsh quitting the band before they were due to tour for Travelogue.Band manager Bob Last ultimately got the two parties to agree to simply continue their work as two separate but related bands, with Oakey keeping the Human League name and Ware & Marsh forming Heaven 17 with new singer Glenn Gregory. However, while this did resolve any legal troubles over band trademarks in advance, it meant that Oakey now had to handle all of the Human League's prior debts and commitments, including the Travelogue tour, which he was now forced to continue under threat of lawsuits from promoters. Thus, Oakey hastily cobbled together a new lineup consisting of high schoolers Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall, veteran musician Ian Burden, and Mk. I visual director Philip Adrian Wright. The Travelogue tour thus went ahead as planned, but the new lineup— especially the presence of Sulley and Catherall— resulted in derision from fans and critics, who felt that the band were now doomed to die out without the musical direction of Ware and Marsh. This, combined with mounting debts to their label, Virgin Records, resulted in a new push to start putting out actual studio recordings to back up the Mk. II incarnation's legitimacy. Oakey and Wright thus hastily cobbled together "Boys and Girls", a brief continuation of the Dark Wave style of the earlier lineup, and while it restored Virgin's confidence in the band (despite only peaking at No. 47 on the UK Singles chart), both they and Oakey realized that it still wasn't coming close to what any of them wanted out of the band.Enter producer Martin Rushent, commissioned by Virgin to help polish up the band's sound and make them more commercially viable in a rapidly-changing musical landscape. Rushent moved the band away from Monumental Studios in Sheffield, which they had shared with Heaven 17 (thus creating a hostile working environment for both acts), to Genetic Studios in Reading, Berkshire to start testing out their ability to work together. Rushent instigated a new approach to the band's sound with the single, trading out the foreboding experimentalism of the Mk. I incarnation for a slicker style that simultaneously subverted itself by sounding meticulously calculated, as if riffing on pop music's own reputation as manufactured. The single that came out of their efforts, "The Sound of the Crowd", ended up becoming the band's first Top 40 hit in the UK, peaking at No. 12. Things became even more fortunate with the group's next single, "Love Action (I Believe in Love)", which peaked at No. 3, giving Virgin enough confidence to greenlight a full-length album.In the end, the album topped the charts in the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway and becoming the third best-selling album of the year in Britain, making it Virgin's first chart-topping album in the UK since Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield (which was the label's very first release in 1973). As the band's first album on their new US label A&M Records, belatedly released in 1982, it also peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and became the 29th best-selling album of 1982 in the States, readily establishing the band as pop forerunners on both sides of the Pond and altogether acting as the band's mainstream Breakthrough Hit. The album would later be certified triple-platinum in Britain, platinum in Canada and New Zealand, and gold in the United States.Dare was supported by four singles: "The Sound of the Crowd", "Love Action (I Believe in Love)", "Open Your Heart", and "Don't You Want Me", the latter of which became the band's most successful release (despite Oakey's initial reluctance to put it out as a single) and Virgin's first chart-topping single. "The Things That Dreams Are Made Of" would also see release as a single in 2008 in the wake of the band's 25th anniversary tour for the album.Tracklist:Side One "The Things That Dreams Are Made Of" (4:14) "Open Your Heart" (3:53) "The Sound of the Crowd" (3:56) "Darkness" (3:56) "Do or Die" (5:25)Side Two "Get Carter" (1:02) "I Am the Law" (4:09) "Seconds" (4:59) "Love Action (I Believe in Love)" (4:58) "Don't You Want Me" (3:56)Your knuckles trope as your fingers curl:
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

 Dare (Music)
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 British Music / int_b6137e6b
 Dare (Music)
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 New Wave Music / int_b6137e6b