Dare!/Love and Dancing [ORIGINAL RECORDING REISSUED] [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]

Human League

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 28, 2003)
• Original Release Date: October 21, 2002
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
• Label: Blue Plate Caroline
• ASIN: B00007MB2U
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #16,137 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Perfecting fusing electronic music with infectiously catchy songwriting, Dare is one of the best selling electronic albums of all time. For this special remastered reissue, the entire Love and Dancing album (arguably the earliest example of a remix album, featuring instrumental and dance mixes from Dare, as well as 'Hard Times'), has been included as bonus material. Caroline. 2003.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two Great Human League Albums On One Cd!, July 5, 2003

By	highway_star (Hallandale, Florida United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Caroline Records has released several classic Human League albums on one cd, completely remastered for improved sound quality. "Dare", in my opinion is the "classic" Human League album, full of excellent synthesized pop songs. The song "Don't You want Me" needs no introduction as this was the major hit off the album. MTV also played the video on regular rotation as well. While there were several other hits from the album, such as "Open Your Heart" and "The Sound Of The Crowd", nothing matched the melodic "Don't You Want Me" in terms of mass appeal. Combine Philip Oakey's deep male vocals with Joanne Catherall and Susanne Sulley's female vocals and you have one of the "new romantic era's" best bands. The album "Love And Dancing" are the full 12" instrumental or dub versions of the songs on "Dare". This album was a must for disc jockeys who wanted to be creative and mixed the vocal versions with the instrumentals. Caroline Records wisely has re-issued and remastered a good portion of the Human League catalog for those who enjoyed their unique sound. Highly recommended!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 70+ minutes of pure 80s electropop joy, February 13, 2003

By	D. H. Richards "ninthwavestore" (Silver Spring, MD USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If for some reason you have been putting off getting "Dare" then this is the reissue you should get. It contains the wonderful "dub" or instrumental remix EP "Love and Dancing." Together these two releases make up an essential starting point for the 80s Synthpop revolution.
Earlier albums, such as the League's own "Travelouge" and "Reproduction" (also remastered and reissued recently in the US with great lost singles and b sides), and albums by Kraftwerk, Caberat Voltiare and others explored what you could do with synths. But "Dare" was really the first album to the art/rock sensibility of the earlier work and marry it to disco/pop. The results are damn near perfect and certainly perfectly encapsulate what 1982 was all about. The sound is cold and sleek yet oddly human and accessible. Phil and the gals sing about love, and (ahem) dancing, plus friends, parties, etc. In fact the only odd step here, "Seconds," stray from that formula, with interesting sonic result but fairly unimaginative lyrics.
People familiar with "Don't You Want Me," (and who isn't, even today's tightly limited pop stations have it in recurrent on their play lists) might be put off that the rest of the album is not quiet as top 40. But give it a spin or two and open you mind.
Dare is the perfect marriage of Art and Pop.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This, January 10, 2006

By	Get What We Give (Georgia) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Who says time travel hasn't been invented?

Pop this CD in your player, fix yourself a gin and tonic (or a Midori Sour), lie back in your recliner, and LISTEN!

Within seconds of the start of "Don't You Want Me?" you'll be immediately transported back to that dance floor in 1981, your hair fully spiked and highlighted, wearing your parachute pants, capezios, a short short skirt, a wife beater and an open deco shirt singing to your dance partner, "You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, when I met you...."

According to Billboard Magazine:

"Dare! captures a moment in time perfectly -- the moment post-punk's robotic fascination with synthesizers met a clinical Bowiesque infatuation with fashion and modern art, including pop culture, plus a healthy love of songcraft."

For those of us in the U.S. for whom the sounds of the era (the late 1970's) no longer held the fascination they once had. Also, disco seemed to have become repetitive, in large part. Then.....then...out of England began to come a noise....a sound...not disco, not rock, not punk, but something much more different!

Long before there was a name for it (New Wave, as it would be called), there was The Human League.

The slick, smoothe sounds that groups such as The Human League were putting out struck just the right chord. The Human League really got started in 1977, but we, on this side of the pond, didn't know it. It wasn't really until 1981's Dare! that the U.S. got a good dose of what the latest British invasion had in store for us. Certainly, The Human League took a strong nod from Kraftwerk, but whereas that group's sound was far more "synthesized," The Human League did as their name tells us and added a much more human factor to the element. It softened out the technology and allowed the vocals to be front and center supported fully by dynamic synthesized sounds.

Is this all too much lavish praise to heap on The Human League? Not really. While there were many groups in England at about the same time creating a similar sound, it was The Human League that really were the first out the gate with the most fully realized, fully formed elaborate orchestrations of synthesizers and slick vocals.

Dare! is not their first album but it is quite possibly their most important album, because it cemented their amazing talent in the collective mind of the U.S. with the tremendously popular and danceable "Don't You Want Me?"

While each song on this album is a hit in its own right (if not charted as such), remember that it was widely received by the music industry as a benchmark album.

You will want this album so that you, too, can travel back to 1981 with no trouble at all!

Dare! is worth the trip.