Track Listing

1. Conditioning
2. What Is Love
3. Pearl In The Shell
4. Hide And Seek
5. Hunt The Self
6. New Song
7. Don't Always Look At The Rain
8. Equality
9. Natural
10. Human's Lib

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35070 in Music
• Released on: 1999-10-01
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Nothing can match the greatness of Howard Jones's haircut, which displayed a peculiar early-1980s combination of mop-top and spikes that was so simply wrong it could hardly have been mistaken for anything else. His first (and best) album, Human's Lib, doesn't have the monolithic sterility of his biggest hits ("Things Can Only Get Better"--the woah-woah-woah song--and "No One Is to Blame", which featured Phil Collins). It's also got some of Jones's catchiest numbers, including the charmingly simple "New Song" and "What is Love". It's all of an era, of course, but let it herein be noted that Jones was singing "I don't want to be hip and cool / I don't want to play by the rules" (from "New Song") well before Nirvana and Beck turned such sentiments into a "revolution". --Keven McAlester

Customer Reviews

A Great If Slightly Off The Wall Album
Like a lot of great albums from the 80`s i bought this on CD to replace my aging knackered vinyl copy and must say i`d forgotten how good but different this was. A moody but catchy album that enabled this song writing, keyboard player to shine. He never bettered this album. Lots of catchy tunes, but to be fair it does sound a little dated now, but the songs are still strong. "Hide And Seek" & Don`t Always Look At The Rain are my personal favs but the rest especially the singles are great to. A quirky danceable, singable pop album with a pleasant atmosphere to it. Well worth a punt !

Viva the 80s
Singular is the word for this awesome pianist/singer/songwriter. His close-mouthed delivery puts me in mind of Beck on "Sea Change", but was probably due to his intense focus on lyrical depth, rether than Beck's stoner sound.

This album nursed me through the 80s - in other words, as a pubescent teenager, his was a voice that spoke to me - alienation and Big Brother (the original BB, not the game show), self-importance and self-analysis, long before we had heard the word Oprah!

New Song is awesome, that terrific synth riff as fresh today as it was then - shame he got sued for ripping off Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill. It isn't that similar a song (?).

Hide and Seek still sounds beautiful, and I'll never forget the terrific piano and vocal version he did at Live Aid. The New Age lyric doesn't grate on me anymore, either - it's a great topline!

Don't Always Look At The Rain was his best single that never was.

And we have What Is Love and Pearl in the Shell, too - four hit singles!

The synth thing was so strong back then that it was probably an ethos as well as a money saving device for Jones... Didn't think much of Jed, his mime-artist friend though.

Go on, throw off those mental chains and give this album a much-needed re-appraisal!

5 stars, for nostalgia alone!

A BRILLIANT DEBUT ALBUM BY HOWARD JONES
This album really takes some beating and has some of the catchiest tracks from the decade. Howard Jones has a very different sound not matched by anyone during this era really except Nik Kershaw. Howards musical style takes some getting used to as his lyrics do not ryme like most pop songs. Also his voice though distinctive is quite flat as he seems to match tempo with the Synth. So as I did on a very first listen to any of Howard's songs it all seems very odd indeed. 'New Song' is a perfect track that sums up Howards style of singing and song writing. His use of the Synth though not progresive like Gary Numan still works very well. What with his spiked hair and outragous outfits he for me signifies the decade. To date Howard has issued some 10 albums but he will forever be judged by many on this brilliant debut. I must confess that not to many years ago I thought he had vanished after the end of the 1980's. However he has just issued a new electro album named 'Revolution of the heart'. Which still catches the style of 'human's Lib' to a great effect and proves he's still a great musician.