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: #13040 in Music
• Released on: 1999-10-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

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

My Favourite Album of All-Time
The High Wycombe lad with spikey hair broke out of life's mundane routine working in a cling film factory in 1983/84 with his astonishing debut album, "Human's Lib". An accomplished pianist, he flooded the album with charming and complex keyboard and synthesizer melodies, continuing in the tradition of artists like Gary Numan and Thomas Dolby. However, Jones added much more heart to his songs, writing thought-provoking lyrics on the human condition.

Consider, "I've lost lots of friends / By sticking my ground / I don't give a damn / Just look what I've found." The album opens with "Conditioning" where Jones warns that "the world tries to make us think that life is full of limitations" and responds in his first hit single "New Song", "I don't wanna be hip and cool / I don't wanna play by the rules".

"Human's Lib" deservedly hit the number one position on the British charts and churned out FOUR Top 10 singles, "New Song", "What Is Love", "Hide and Seek", and "Pearl in the Shell". Jones put out several albums after this initial effort, but this remains his best, in my opinion.

Back in 1984, overwhelmed with high school peer pressure, that one HAD to follow certain patterns of behaviour, this album soothed and made strong my drive to "throw off your mental chains", its music uplifted me, and I couldn't stop listening to the thing for a couple of years.

Yiiiiipppppeeeeeeeee
What a blast from the past! I was Mr Jones's biggest fan back in his hey day and I've fallen in love all over again.

I just love this album. If you're a fan of this man, you won't be disappointed with this album.

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!