Philip Oakey (b. October 2, 1955, Sheffield, UK), is a singer best-known as the frontman of the popular synthpop group, The Human League. He also collaborated with producer Giorgio Moroder on the album Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder which included the hit single "Together in Electric Dreams". October 2 is the 275th day (276th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 90 days remaining. ... 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see Sheffield (disambiguation). ... Synthpop is a style of popular music in which the synthesizer is the dominant musical instrument. ... The Human League are an English synthpop band formed in 1977, who, after several changes in line up, achieved great popularity in the 1980s and a limited comeback in the mid-1990s. ... Giorgio Moroder (born Giorgio Moroder on April 26, 1940 in Ortisei, Italy) is a German-speaking Italian record producer, songwriter and performer, whose groundbreaking work with synthesizers during the 1970s was a significant influence on techno and electronic music in general. ... Philip Oakey & Girogio Moroder was a collaborative album released in 1985 by Phil Oakey, lead singer of the electronic band The Human League and producer Giorgio Moroder. ...
He was educated at King Edward VII School in Sheffield. Wesley College in Sheffield, England was founded in 1838 to educate the sons of the laity. ...
In the early 1980s, Oakey (along with the rest of the group) had a highly distinctive visual style. He was particularly famous for his asymmetrical haircut, long on one side and cropped short on the other. An asymmetric cut is a haircut, usually for women but occasionally for men, in which the hair is cut in such a way that the haircut does not have left-right symmetry. ...
PhilOakey remembers it well: "We're always getting requests for our songs to be used in ads and this time they came to us and said Ford wanted to do a jokey advert about Don't You Want Me. We told them, as usual, to get stuffed.
Oakey is still annoyed about how the band were perceived at the height of their success.
Oakey, a refreshingly candid and intelligent person who has seen many different sides of the music industry over the past 25 years or so, says he has no plans (despite plenty of interest) to write a book about his experiences.
PhilOakey, lead singer of the definitive 80s group Human League, says pop video channel MTV was vital to the band's global success.
But Oakey is adamant that their impact would have been minimal without the video they made for the track - spurred on by the advent of MTV in August the same year.
Oakey is uncertain whether MTV - and its promotion of the video - can be held solely responsible for the increased involvement of the marketing men in pop.
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