Hysteria by The Human League

Hysteria, the Human League's fourth album, arrived on Virgin on 7 May 1984, and the title says plenty about how it got made. Following the smash of Dare was always going to be brutal, and it was: producers Martin Rushent and Chris Thomas both walked off the job before Hugh Padgham saw it through. Philip Oakey, Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley still front the band, with Jo Callis, Ian Burden and Adrian Wright on keyboards and Jim Russell on drums.

"The Lebanon" was the single that made it across the Atlantic, the only one from the album to chart in the US. Elsewhere they borrow a 1973 Lyn Collins and James Brown number and rework tracks from the Fascination! EP and a B-side. The gatefold shows the band sprawled around a big living room watching Norman Wisdom in The Early Bird. It still reached number three in Britain and went gold, just nowhere near the heights of its multi-platinum big brother.

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