Don’t You Want Me

Don’t You Want Me

The Human League

The Human League’s lead singer, Phil Oakey, wrote “Don’t You Want Me” after reading a photo-story in a romance magazine for teen girls. The song tells the story of a man who falls for a cocktail waitress—he turns her into a star, but their love sours.

Oakey originally recorded the song as a male solo—but after watching the 1976 musical drama A Star Is Born, he decided to make it a duet with one of the band’s female vocalists, Susan Ann Sulley.

After Dare! had already generated three hits in the UK, Oakley did not want Virgin Records to release a fourth. He was convinced “the public were now sick of hearing the Human League”.

“Don’t You Want Me” was Philip Oakey’s least favorite track on the album – which is why he stuck it at the end as the last track. He thought of the song as a “poor quality filler track” and did not like producer Martin Rushent’s remixed version. But despite how vocal Oakley got, Virgin’s chief executive Simon Draper made the band release it as the fourth single anyway, making a compromise with Oakley that a poster would be included with the single so fans wouldn’t feel “ripped off”.

The success of “Don’t You Want Me” led to international fame for the Human League. The song reached #1 in several countries around the world in late 1981/early 1982 including the UK, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand and Norway. It did the same in the US in the summer of 1982, becoming the first US chart-topper to feature an English band using a synthesizer.

In the UK, it was the best selling song of 1981. In 1982, Human League were nominated for the Grammy for Best New Artist, in great part due to the success of this song. In 2015, “Don’t You Want Me” was voted by the British public as the 7th greatest chart-topper of the 80s.