The Human League

It's been over thirty years since Sheffield computer geeks Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh recruited flamboyant ex-schoolmate Philip Oakey to form what would become one of the most successful synthpop groups of all time. Oakey has been the sole constant in The Human League: when Ware and Marsh walked out over creative differences in 1980, he recruited schoolgirls Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley as vocalists. The resulting album, Dare, went triple platinum, while single 'Don't You Want Me Baby' would sell over two million copies. Where the group's story diverges from that of other early-'80s pop acts is in the fact that it never actually ended: over three decades later, they're still slogging away, and released a perfectly respectable new album earlier this year – Credo, produced by Sheffield electronic group I Monster. As Sulley told the Japan Times recently, 'we're a stubborn group of people and we don't know what else to do.' Works for us.