"Empire State Human" is a song by the British Synthesizer group The Human League. The song was written by Philip Oakey, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh. It was produced by Colin Thurston, and recorded at Monumental Studios in Sheffield. It was used in the 2012 video game Lollipop Chainsaw in a minigame for the retro stage, and also featured on the game's original soundtrack.
The song was the third single to be released by the original line-up of the Human League, and the first and only single from the band's 1979 debut album Reproduction. Upon its first release in October 1979, the single failed to chart. However, it was re-released in June 1980 and fared slightly better, reaching number 62. For the re-release, Virgin Records included a free copy of the single "Only After Dark" with the first 15,000 copies as a sweetener.
Lyrically, "Empire State Human" is a song about becoming powerful using the analogy of size, with Oakey declaring that he wants to be "tall" a total of 60 times in 3 minutes. Uncut magazine drew a comparison with Oakey's own personal ambition:
| “ | "I wanna be tall, tall, tall, as big as a wall, wall, wall". Oakey's Nietzschian pop fantasy reflected his own burgeoning full-on pop ambitions... | ” |
The B-side, "Introducing", is an instrumental. Oakey sang on the original recording but the vocals were not used on the released version.
The open shirted man on the cover artwork is in fact Ian Craig Marsh's father.
Famous quotes containing the words empire, state and/or human:
“Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the Corner Store, near the village center, hangs a large sign reading: ‘After 40 years of credit business, we have closed our book of Sorrow.’”
—For the State of Maine, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Whoever considers morality the main objective of human existence, seems to me like a person who defines the purpose of a clock as not going wrong. The first objective for a clock, is, however, that it does run; not going wrong is an additional regulative function. If not a watch’s greatest accomplishment were not going wrong, unwound watches might be the best.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)