The Human League’s Don’t You Want Me, 40-years-old this month, is not merely great. It may be the greatest pop song ever.
Pop is an open invitation. It creates, as Don’t You Want Me did in the bleak midwinter of 1981/82, a warm glow of collective experience. This is the wellspring of any profundity we attribute to it. That’s true of all pop’s grand arias, such as She Loves You, West End Girls, Dancing Queen, Reach Out And I’ll Be There, Billy Jean or Hit Me Baby One More Time. Whereas River Deep Mountain High is deliberately epic (no bad thing), Don’t You Want Me is greater still by its accidental nature. What could be a finer example of perfect pop than something that wasn’t intended to be so?
A modern reading of the lyrics is that Oakey’s persona is textbook toxic masculinity. The words are not those of a love song, but a game of power and rejection
The Human League Mark II, without two founding members Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh.
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