“(Keep Feeling) Fascination” - The Human League
(Words/music: Jo Callis and Phillip Oakley, available on Fascination! EP, A&M 1983)
Nearly two decades after it ended, the music of the 1980s still has a public image problem. To many in my generation, nostalgia boiled the decade down to the kind of stuff you’d find at an 80s theme party – side pony tails, hair metal, and synthesizers. Our surface level interpretation of the 1980s prevents many of us from getting deeper into the actual songs. Of course, I’m not trying to suggest that the 1980s as a whole deserves a critical reevaluation; instead, I’m reminded that every era has bad songs and that while these songs provide convenient punching bags for critics, we shouldn’t let these overshadow some of the creative work done concurrently. However, while I’ve always advocated spending a closer look at certain bands (some – The Smiths, R.E.M., and other bands slightly out of step with the rest of music during that era – don’t face the same retroactive scorn), I’ll be the first to acknowledge some of the 1980s aesthetic sins. Yes, each decade has its own guilt where the bad overshadows the good (disco, for example). However, the synth-heavy 1980s brought this to the next level of awful – I understand the innate aversion to this period, yet it short changes some songs.
If I were to quickly categorize the period into three categories – one for the great music that transcends the era, one for the awful music that would be awful in any era, and a third that for good or bad are clear products of its era - “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” falls into that middle ground. At its core, it’s a fun, bouncy song. In particular, the bass line makes the song work – it’s more likely to get stuck in my head than the melody or the words. For a majority of its running time, “Fascination” is a fun head-nodder. However, all of the elements that make the song work – the trade-off vocals, the bass line, and it’s light feel – pale in comparison to the synthesizer in the chorus. Melodically, the synth line is fine (and actually complements the song well). However, it’s too loud and too gaudy – it sounds vaguely out of tune, if not entirely out of place. I’m not sure where to point the blame – at the mixer for making it so prominent, at the band for selecting that specific sound, or at the public for cultivating a taste for anything with a synthesizer, but it takes a perfectly good song hostage. It’s not alone, as I can think of a few excellent songs (Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” immediately comes to mind) undercut by their production. Even if this oppressive synthesizer distracts me from the rest of the song on occasion, I’d like to think that the composition is like a butterfly waiting to escape from its synthesizer-spun cocoon. It’s a great song with a very good performance that’s handicapped by this one element, making it an excellent choice to be covered – just leave your Korg keyboard at home this time.More on The Human League: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm
Nice write-up! Though unsurprisingly I mostly disagree - for instance, I wish the Boss had done more with the “Dancing In The Dark” rock/disco template. It sounds like a response to the feminizing and evolution of Bruceian escape-urges you get in stuff like Irene Cara’s “Flashdance (What A Feeling)”.
I do think that “Fascination” is uncomfortably dominated by its synth line tho - my suspicion is intentionally, since they were generally very good and careful about how their songs balanced and worked as arrangements (they mastered this well before they learned to write good hooks). So the off-kilterness of “Fascination” is there for a reason, mind you I can’t exactly work out what that reason is - it’s not an HL song I return to very often.
