“Don't You Want Me” by The Human League

"Don't You Want Me" was the fourth single Virgin lifted from the Human League's third album, Dare, in 1981, and it became the song the band is known for above all others. Philip Oakey wrote the words and shares the music credit with Jo Callis and Philip Adrian Wright; Martin Rushent produced it with the band.

The sound is synthesizers all the way down, Oakey, Callis and Ian Burden stacking cool, glassy keyboard lines over a beat made for the dance floor, but the heart of it is the voices. Oakey's deep, wounded lead trades off with Susan Ann Sulley's cooler, clipped answer, and Joanne Catherall joins Sulley on the backing vocals. It's a pop song with a chill running right through it, as catchy as it is cold.

Nothing sold more copies in Britain in 1981, it was that year's Christmas number one, and the following July it topped the Hot 100 for three weeks. Rolling Stone later named it the breakthrough song of the Second British Invasion.

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