Phil Oakey

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Phil Oakey · Philip Oakey is an English singer and songwriter, born in Hinckley in 1955 and raised in Sheffield, among other places. He is the frontman and co-founder of the synth-pop group The Human League. His musical career began by chance in 1977. He had bought a saxophone but gave up learning it, and had no plans to join a band. His old schoolmate Martyn Ware was looking for a singer for the group The Future, in which Ware and Ian Craig Marsh used analogue synthesizers instead of ordinary instruments. Ware left a note on Oakey's front door. Oakey knew little about music, but was known in Sheffield for his unconventional clothes.

Music and breakthrough

In 1977 the group was renamed The Human League. The first performance was in 1978, after which they signed with Fast Records. In 1981 the breakthrough came with The Sound of the Crowd, Love Action (I Believe In Love) and the album Dare. Oakey co-wrote and sang Don't You Want Me, a song that reached number one in the United States and in Britain. In the early 1980s he stood out with an unusual haircut: long on one side, short on the other.

Influence

Outside the group Oakey worked with the producer Giorgio Moroder. Their song Together in Electric Dreams, for the 1984 film Electric Dreams, became an international hit. A year later the album Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder followed. As the singer of The Human League he has been at the front for more than forty years in a style that definitively linked pop music with synthesizers.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1985Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder