YMMV / Dare

• And You Thought It Would Fail:
  • The Mk. II lineup was heavily scorned when they debuted in 1980, and the tepid response towards "Boys and Girls" only galvanized perceptions that the Human League were done for. That all changed when Dare catapulted the band to the forefront of the British and American mainstream.
  • Virgin insisted on releasing "Don't You Want Me" as a single, even though Phil Oakey thought it was the weakest song on Dare. It turned out to be their first No. 1 single on both sides of the Atlantic.
• Misaimed Fandom: Many of the people who made "Don't You Want Me" a hit seem to have thought it was a romantic love duet, whereas it's actually about a woman breaking away from an emotionally abusive and arrogant man.
• Signature Song: "Don't You Want Me" remains the band's most famous song, being their first No. 1 single, their Breakthrough Hit in America, and the one song of theirs that most frequently gets remixed, covered, and used in TV, films, and advertisements. It's so popular, in fact, that a number of casual listeners in later generations mistake the band for a One-Hit Wonder — it eclipsed their other material that much.
• Tough Act to Follow: Suffice to say, they were never able to quite recapture the immense critical and commercial success of Dare, with later albums seeing diminishing returns until a short-lived comeback in the UK and continental Europe during the mid-90s. "The Stars Are Going Out" from their 1990 album Romantic? quite bluntly reflects on this, describing just how heavily the band fizzled out in the years after Dare's success.

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