The Human League On Legacy, Chemistry And Returning Down Under in 2027
Following on from their sellout Australian tour in 2024 the timeless Synth-Pop geniuses of The Human League will return in January and February 2027 with their highly anticipated Generations: The Greatest Hits Tour, bringing decades of iconic hits to fans nationwide. Hailing from Sheffield, UK, The Human League dominated the global charts throughout the 1980s and beyond with their stylish, forward-thinking sound, a sound that remains as fresh, influential, and relevant today as ever. Long before electronic music became mainstream, the band were among the first to successfully use computers and sequencers to create rhythm and melody, redefining modern pop in the process.
Today, founding members Philip Oakey, Joanne Catherall, and Susan Ann Sulley continue to captivate audiences around the world. With Oakey’s unmistakable voice and magnetic stage presence at the helm, The Human League remain one of the most compelling live acts of their era with hits including: Don’t You Want Me, (Keep Feeling) Fascination, Human, Love Action (I Believe in Love), The Lebanon, Mirror Man, Being Boiled and many more. Australian audiences can expect an unforgettable night with the band’s signature stamp in dynamic and dazzling live setting. The timeless songs stand as monuments to the band’s song writing craft and enduring cultural impact, continuing to resonate across generations of music lovers. Phillip Oakey talks to Rob Lyon about their 2027 Australian tour.
Looking forward to the return of The Human League and it’s great to be talking to such a music legend.
I’m always surprised when people say those things, but yeah. It doesn’t look like that from inside.
Another Australian tour must be really exciting and an absolute highlight to be returning in early 2027.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Really, really looking forward to it. We had such a great time last time.
What is it about Australia that you love touring here so often?
Well, right at the moment, I would say it’s optimism, that we turn up in Adelaide or other Australian cities, and everyone more or less looks like they are looking forward to the future. I think Europe’s going through a little bit of a not very exciting time. I think that Britain especially is at the bottom of an economic cycle. So everyone’s desperately trying to get money off the government that hasn’t got any money left and it’s a little tiny bit miserable and scary in Europe at the moment. Turning up in Australia and everyone seems to be going round, going to the coffee shops, going out and eating and looking happy.
Have there been any particular moments or shows here in Australia that have really stood out for you touring here?
We have been going there for so long, I’m trying to think of particular moments. You know, we stayed right next to Sydney Opera House once, just a slight walk down a hill, go past a few trees full of flying foxes, which we’d never seen before. I’m a bit of an animal fan. Strangely, I’ve always really liked animals since I was a kid and we went to Melbourne and within about an hour and a half I was stood in a field full of kangaroos, . So it’s that sort of thing. I mean, it’s been fascinating to see Australia change over the decades as well.
Absolutely, when you come to Adelaide, you have to go to Cleland Wildlife Park where you can actually have those up‑close experiences with kangaroos and koalas and snakes and all those sorts of things?
I’m just trying to think. I wonder if it was in the same place in Melbourne, but I suddenly realised I was standing next to a cassowary, when you’ve never seen one and everyone has told you that they’re really dangerous and they will try and nut you as soon as possible, you think, oh, right. In fact, it just stood there and looked at me.
What is it about the music of The Human League that continues to not only resonate with Australians, but people right around the world?
I think we must have been there when a corner was turned. Music had been very, very established as a sort of guitar‑based sort of thing at the time. To be fair, we had to fight to leave guitars out of our records. We were actually hauled into the office at the record company just before we started selling plenty of records and told, the producers and the head of the record company sort of got together and the producer said, “If I say you’ve got to have a guitar on the record, you’ve got to have a guitar on the record.” So I think we sort of, like shy petulant kids, mumbled and said, yeah, right, okay. But then we never did it.
Are you continually blown away with the legacy that the music continues to build. That’s got to be mind‑blowing?
Well, I think that’s the bit that is really, really strange. I sort of wonder if maybe we were the last blast of a very understandable kind of music, that we were pop, we did it in the old‑fashioned way that I guess was established by The Beatles and things. You knew what the chorus was, you knew what the verse was. We’d leave a little bit out and try and have an interesting musical break or something. Afterwards it not only broke up, but it broke into things that were less easy to maybe sing along to. Dance got really big over in Britain in the nineties. The groups often turned into sort of shoegazers and we looked like pop stars. Although people were making great records in the nineties, they sort of looked a little bit like they were embarrassed about it. We just go out there and say, look, we’re an old glam synth band. We are going to get our brightest clothes on, and we are going to dance around for an hour and sing some songs you can sing along to.
Seeing the younger group of fans coming through that must be really humbling as well, to see that generational shift?
It’s really amazing and I didn’t think it would go that way. Through my youth, you were looking for a new wave, and with that new wave you would stop having as much interest in the ones that went before. But maybe youngsters now are quite thoughtful. Also, they can find things on the internet that you used to have to go and plough through record shops for, or get your pencil out when you heard something on the radio and go and try and buy it. But now you can find things, if anyone hears a Gary Numan record they like, they’ll go on Spotify or something and it’ll say, “Oh, what about The Human League? What about Japan?” And maybe that’s what it is.
Is that how you define your legacy, and has your own view of that changed over the years?
Um, I don’t know. I don’t know if I really think about that. I think that I just sort of get on with things and probably my problem is that I certainly try not to dwell on the past. I just go, you know, someone comes in the room, our manager comes in the room and he says, “Listen, we might be able to go to Australia again,” and we all go, hey, what do we have to do? And looking forward rather than thinking, oh God, it was great in the eighties.
Your influence on modern synth‑pop is enormous, can’t be understated. Do you ever feel when you hear a new artist that, ooh, there’s a bit of us in there?
I do, I do think that, although sometimes I think that wasn’t deliberate. It was more that we really liked innovation. You know, there was a science show on British TV and the day that they showed synthesizers, we all went, we want to do that just because it’s new. So we were lucky enough to get those machines and do the things that maybe anyone else would’ve done when they got those machines. We were just dead lucky and we got there first.
With the many years The Human League have been together, is there anything that surprises you about the band now?
The fact that we still get on sort of surprises me. You wouldn’t have guessed that a fairly daft young kid gets two women not that long out of school to come in a group, and we get on and somehow we make it work for forty five years, something like that. It turns out that we had the right personalities to fit with each other, I think, and we were very lucky to have three of us. I think if it had been a two or a four by now, that would’ve broken up. But the three means that we balance each other out. So that still really surprises me. It surprises me when I get on the bus when we’re working and I look around and I like everyone on the bus. You know, the guys that go on stage with us are wonderful. The crew that works with us are great. We just look forward to it all.
Do you feel like there’s another creative chapter ahead for The Human League, or is that not as important?
Definitely, definitely, definitely. I mean, we’re always doing little things. The hard thing is finding producers these days. Nowadays there’s a lot more good groups than there are producers. There used to be about the right number of producers, but mainly because the money’s not flowing in through record sales the way it did. There’s a bit of a tension because everyone tries to get writing credits, and we were very happy that we wrote the stuff and the producer came in and produced and engineered the stuff and got paid properly for it. Now the balance has slightly changed.
What does the perfect Human League show look like for you?
Well, God knows if we’ll ever find it! We are always just moving things round a little bit, just trying to keep up the interest. Sometimes I think we stand on stage and think, oh, we shouldn’t have done that song in that order. I don’t even know if it matters anymore, everyone comes along, they want to like it these days, and we just do the best we can.
Do you still enjoy the touring side just as much now as you did back when you started?
Oh, I think it’s much better now. It was too much pressure in the eighties really. I didn’t enjoy maybe the whole of the eighties and maybe right through the nineties. If you’ve had a few hits and then you start seeing people coming along having bigger hits than you, the record company likes them and they’ve stopped liking you, and it’s a pain. You can’t walk down the street because everyone looks at you, but also you’re not doing as well as you were, so you just feel a bit miserable. But as you slowly ease into it, it just gets better and better. We love going and seeing new places. We are going to be in Australia early next year. This year we did twenty one shows in America, which is, I think, as long a tour as we’ve ever done and we just go, brilliant, we’re going to get on the bus today, we’re going to see a new town, then we’re going to do a little bit of a show. It’s really good.
Is there anything left creatively that you want to achieve that you haven’t yet?
I’d like to have another number one album. I don’t know how you do that, but that’s what I’ve been thinking about for quite a while now.
Do you have any sort of thoughts in the back of your mind about what you would do?
Something quite simple, leaving out the complications, trying to concentrate on the good stuff. I’ve always really liked the bands that do simple things. One of my favourite ever records was the Fine Young Cannibals’ first LP. Something like that, deceptively simple, but if you look deep, everything’s good.
Looking forward to January when the tour starts, it has been a pleasure chatting.
I’d be there tomorrow if I could.
Interview By Rob Lyon
Catch The Human League on the following dates, tickets from Destroy All Lines…
