Susan Ann Sulley

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

Susan Ann Sulley is an English singer, born in 1963 in Sheffield. She is one of the two female singers of the synth-pop band The Human League. Together with her school friend Joanne Catherall she was spotted in 1980, at the age of seventeen, by the singer Philip Oakey in the Sheffield club Crazy Daisy. The band had just split up and had to go on a European tour within a week. Oakey asked the two girls along as dancers and singers, even though they had no experience at all. The audience, which had expected the original all-male band, received them at first with hostility.

Music and breakthrough

During that tour Oakey had them sing along on existing songs and was happy with the result. In 1981 the album Dare came out, and Sulley sang on Don't You Want Me, a duet about a singer who leaves her bossy discoverer. In the accompanying video she herself played the lead role, in a trench coat on a wet winter night. The song reached number one in the United Kingdom and the United States. Hysteria (1984) followed, and the single Human, which reached number one in the United States. After a lean period the group returned in 1994 with Tell Me When and the album Octopus, on which Sulley sang the ballad One Man in My Heart.

Influence

Sulley shows how a pop act could broaden its sound: the cool synthesizers gained a human, direct voice. The group is still touring.

Listening