Crash by The Human League

Crash, the Human League's fifth studio album, came out on Virgin on 8 September 1986, and it's the sound of the Sheffield synth-pop band handing the keys to American producers. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis produced it and wrote several of the songs themselves, and their slick, rubbery studio sheen sits over everything, with Philip Oakey, Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley out front and Ian Burden, Adrian Wright and Jim Russell still in the lineup.

The payoff was "Human", which became the band's second US number-one single that same year, a feat they hadn't pulled off since "Don't You Want Me" at the start of the decade. Crash swaps the cold Sheffield machinery for smooth, glossy pop, and it's the record where the band sounds most like somebody else's vision.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.