The Human League — Open Your Heart (1981)

JUL 01 1981 · 12:00

The Human League — Open Your Heart (1981) (1981) Director: Brian Grant Era: Second British Invasion Prelude (1981) - Peak moment of UK synth-pop's commercial breakthrough, immediately preceding the *Dare* album release and the global MTV era's dawn Tier 1 preservation priority. This is the first-ever promotional music video produced by The Human League, a band central to both the UK synth-pop canon and the global MTV era. Directed by Brian Grant at the beginning of his defining decade of music video work, it represents a precise, documented moment where British pop's visual language was being codified. The video's deliberate integration with the *Dare* album visual identity makes it an invaluable primary source for the study of early 1980s pop marketing, analogue video aesthetics, and synth-pop subculture. Context: Released on 2 October 1981 by Virgin Records, 'Open Your Heart' was the third single from The Human League's pivotal third album *Dare* and served as its deliberate 'taster' single, issued just three weeks before the album's UK release. It peaked at number six in the UK Singles Chart and marked the highest commercial profile the band had achieved to that point. The video is historically significant as the band's first studio-produced promotional film — previous releases had used live footage. Its creation coincided with the dawning awareness among UK labels that music video was becoming an essential marketing tool, with MTV having launched in the US that same year. The video's design strategy of visually fusing the single with the *Dare* album artwork is an early documented example of cross-media brand coherence in pop music promotion. Director notes: Confirmed as the director of 'Open Your Heart' (1981) by IMDb, IMVDb, Wikipedia, and Grokipedia. This was the first ever studio-produced promotional music video made by The Human League. Virgin Records and Philip Oakey deliberately used the video to promote the forthcoming album *Dare* as much as the single itself, so Grant borrowed heavily from the album's visual identity: the opening scene replicates the six individual portrait photographs from the *Dare* cover exactly, and all band members are dressed and made up in the same style as the album's photography. The video was shot entirely in a studio on videotape and mixed and enhanced using then-cutting-edge analogue video effects. The video ends with a shot of the then-unreleased *Dare* album cover. The promo aired on BBC's Top of the Pops on 22 October 1981 in place of a live performance.