"Don't You Want Me" (The Human League)

I remember hearing "Don't You Want Me" from The Human League's 1981 album Dare on the radio as a kid.  It sounded like a pop song made by robots from outer space, and I loved every minute of it.  Still do.

Funny thing is, the band wasn't all that enamored with the final product, even though it turned out to be the group's signature song.

Frontman Phillip Oakey had written "Don't You Want Me" after reading a story in a teen magazine about a well-connected guy who pulls a young girl out of a dead-end waitressing job and turns her into a star, only to be dumped by said girl in the end.  If you focus on the track's hook, it seems like Oakey wrote a simple breakup song, in which the male protagonist is begging his ex-girlfriend to rethink their relationship.  But if you take a closer look at his lyrics, they paint a picture of a sociopathic lover who threatens to destroy this young woman's newfound success because she has (wisely) decided that it's time to move on.  In other words, this is not a guy to root for.  Although, it is one hell of a character study.

Taking it from that standpoint, Oakey envisioned the song sounding very dark and isolating.  But Martin Rushent, the producer/engineer on Dare, wasn't aware of Oakey's vision or the true mood of the lyrical content; he just heard a song with a memorable hook that was begging to be a pop hit.  So after the vocals and basic instrumentation were laid down in the studio, Rushent and keyboardist Jo Callis took over completing the track, adding copious layers of synthesizers to really ratchet up its pop feel.  When they were done, they knew they'd created the band's first mega hit.  But Oakey and bandmates Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley disagreed, as Rushent told Sound on Sound in a July 2010 interview.

"When (Oakey) and the girls returned and we played it to them, they absolutely hated it. 'We need to have a band meeting, Martin.  This is horrible.  You've completely ruined the song'."

Ultimately, it took execs from the band's record label stepping in and convincing them to release it as a single.  And even though the impossibly catchy tune about manipulation and dysfunction turned them into pop stars and poster children for the glammed-out British synthpop movement overnight, Oakey & Co. still banished the track to the final slot at the end of Side Two on the album.