Cult of Jef

Amer­i­can vocal­ist Laura Brani­gan relased “Self Con­trol” in the Spring of 1984 and peaked at #5 on the U.K. Sin­gles Chart and #4 on the U.S. Bill­board Hot 100. The song was one of the most pop­u­lar across Europe dur­ing the sum­mer of 1984 and was the most suc­cess­ful sin­gle of the year in Switzerland.

“Self Con­trol” had orig­i­nally been recorded by Ital­ian singer Raf, who had co-written the song in Eng­lish with Gian­carlo Bigazzi and Steve Pic­colo. (Bigazzi had also co-written her ear­lier hit song, “Glo­ria,” back in 1982.) The song was pro­duced by Harold Fal­ter­meyer, who had been men­tored by Gior­gio Moroder.

Ver­sions
Self Con­trol [Edit] 3’50
Self Con­trol [LP Version/Vocal]4’08
Self Con­trol [Extended Version/Vocal Extended Version/12″ Ver­sion] 5’00

Laura Brani­gan Music Video

Raf Music Video

Music Video
The music video for “Self Con­trol” was directed by Academy-Award Win­ner William Fried­kin. MTV refused to play the video, due to it’s sexy nature, until after a minor cut had been made. Brani­gan resisted at first, but then her record com­pany con­vinced her to do so, and the music video was in heavy rota­tion on MTV.

The sto­ry­line of “Self Con­trol” involves Brani­gan awake while a male sleeps on his stom­ach in her bed. Brani­gan goes out and is stalked by a stranger in a mask and a trench coat. The mys­te­ri­ous stranger appears in the club where Brani­gan is danc­ing with other dancers. She fol­lows the mys­te­ri­ous stranger down­stairs and finds an orgy of bal­let dancers wear­ing masks. Brani­gan returns to her apart­ment where the mys­te­ri­ous stranger and the dancers seduce her. After the sun comes up, Brani­gan returns to bed, only to find the men in her bed is the mys­te­ri­ous stranger, with­out a shirt, wear­ing a mask.

Mem­o­ries
I had enjoyed Laura Branigan’s hit “Glo­ria” from two years ear­lier and really liked “Self Con­trol,” too. I remem­ber record­ing the music video on a VHS tape where I kept my favorite music videos. The video seemed kind of weird at the time

What are your mem­o­ries of “Self Con­trol” by Laura Branigan?

The Human League released “(Keep Feel­ing) Fas­ci­na­tion” on April 17, 1983. It reached #2 on the U.K. Sin­gles Chart and #8 on the U.S. Bill­board Hot 100. It also topped the Bill­board Hot Dance Club Play Chart.

After the huge suc­cess of their pre­vi­ous album, Dare, The Human League were under immense pres­sure from Vir­gin Records to pro­duce an even more suc­cess­ful fol­lowup album. As the record­ing ses­sions lagged on, the band released “Mir­ror Man” and “(Keep Feel­ing) Fas­ci­na­tion” as stand­alone sin­gles. Their record label decided to release an EP enti­tled Fas­ci­na­tion! until the band com­pleted their next album, which would be Hys­te­ria in 1984. Fas­ci­na­tion! includes two ver­sions of “(Keep Feel­ing) Fas­ci­na­tion,” “Mir­ror Man,” “Hard Times” (B-Side for their pre­vi­ous sin­gle “Love Action (I Believe in Love)”), “I Love You Too Much,” and “You Remind Me of Gold” (B-Side to “Mir­ror Man”).
The song is unique for The Human League, as the verses are alter­nately shared between Philip Oakey, Susan Ann Sul­ley, Joanne Cather­all, and guitarist/keyboardist Jo Callis.

On the record sleeve, “(Keep Feel­ing) Fas­ci­na­tion” fea­tures the word RED, which ref­er­ences a brief cat­e­go­riza­tion The Human League used in the early 80s to indi­cate whether a sin­gle was clas­si­fied as pop (blue) or dance (red).

Ver­sions
(Keep Feel­ing) Fas­ci­na­tion [7″ Version/Chris Thomas Remix] 3’43
(Keep Feel­ing) Fas­ci­na­tion [Extended/Extended Version/Extended 12″ Version/Extended Remix/Special Extended Ver­sion] 4’56
(Keep Feel­ing) Fas­ci­na­tion [Improvisation/Improvisation 12″ Dub/Dub Ver­sion] 6’15

Music Video
Direc­tor Steve Bar­ron came up wit the idea for the music video for “(Keep Feel­ing) Fas­ci­na­tion.” It begins with an orange dot on a map, which morphs into a huge orange dot painted in a run­down neigh­bor­hood in Newham, Lon­don, even­tu­ally reveal­ing an orange house in the mid­dle of the dot. The cam­era moves through an open win­dow to show The Human League per­form­ing the song, although the inside of the house is painted gray. Later in the video, two boys scene play­ing foot­ball kick the ball into the orange dot. When one of the boys fetches it, the ball and his clothes change to orange. The scenes with the band were actu­ally filmed in a stu­dio, as a fam­ily was liv­ing in the house at the time. The house remained painted orange until it was demol­ished a few months later.

Mem­o­ries
I caught the music video for “(Keep Feel­ing) Fas­ci­na­tion” by The Human League late one night on a music video show at my grandmother’s house. I was already famil­iar with “Don’t You Want Me” and “Mir­ror Man,” but I had never seen The Human Leage before, and I remem­ber being shocked by Phil Oakey’s dan­gling ear­rings and makeup. Of course, every­thing about the video is visu­ally stim­u­lat­ing, but what stands out is that fan­tas­tic bass line and shared vocal duties. This song always makes me want to sing along and dance. It also reminds me of a day when I drove to Sem­i­nary South Mall with my friends Joan, Kent, and Susan. This song was play­ing on my tape deck when we parked and Kent said some­thing incred­i­bly nasty and hate­ful. The rest of us looked at each other and laughed, hav­ing no idea what put him in such a sud­den bad mood.

What are your mem­o­ries of “(Keep Feel­ing) Fas­ci­na­tion” by the Human League?