For new wave fans, one of this summer’s hottest tours is a dream triple bill featuring three of the most heralded names in synthpop when The Human League, Soft Cell and Alison Moyet of Yaz hit the road in June.

“We often try to tour America as much as we can,” said Human League frontman Philip Oakey. “We’ve been going there since the very early 1980s. We enjoy it there, so it’s more of a question as to why it doesn’t happen more often. And as the world gets more complicated and more bureaucratic and it’s seemingly more difficult to come over there, we finally get a package together that meant we could do it.”

For Soft Cell’s Marc Almond, he feels a tour featuring these three towering examples of the sound of the early 1980s is long overdue. 

“I thought what a great lineup: three artists who had been part of electronic music in the early ’80s,” he said upon hearing the proposition. “I was immediately excited, Soft Cell touring with The Human League completes a circle as they were such an inspiration to Soft Cell in our early days and after all these years, finally touring with them. Great to be with Alison, too — she is extraordinary — who was also a part of that early electronic music scene with Yazoo.”

Dubbed the Generations tour, the monthlong trek across North America begins on June 2 in San Diego before coming to Los Angeles two days later to play the iconic Hollywood Bowl. Almond is positively chuffed at the notion. 

“I’m really thrilled, it’s one of the things that excited me most about the upcoming tour — it’s such an iconic venue,” he said. “It will be an amazing night like no other, and unmissable. What could be better on a warm LA night under the stars.”

For Oakey, playing the Bowl marks his return to LA from a recent visit.

“I was in America maybe about a month ago,” he said. “My girlfriend’s sister lives in Los Angeles, so we went over for a little 10-day break.I really like Los Angeles, which is a very strange thing, because I’m a glum Northern English leftie. But California really quite suits me. I don’t feel pressured there, and I seem to fit in.”

Hard to believe it’s been 45 years since Oakey and Almond were working on their respective groups’ most renowned albums in The Human League’s seminal third LP “Dare” and Soft Cell’s acclaimed debut “Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret” — two titles that would take off here in America in 1982 once a young MTV got their mitts on them.

Oakey attributes the success to The Human League’s creative shift from the more abrasive, avant-garde sound of the band’s early works with group founders Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh (who would go on to form Heaven 17 after leaving the fold) to the more pop-friendly danceability he created with remaining member Adrian Wright and new singers Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley on “Dare.” 

“Every time we’ve done alright, it was because a team had come together almost by accident,” he explained. “At the time of ‘Dare,’ we had recruited two new songwriters. Ian Burden came along to play keys on the tour though he’s actually a reggae bass player, and he wrote the first couple of singles — ‘Sound of the Crowd’ and ‘Love Action’ — and they were very bass-inflected. And then Jo Callis joined in, and Jo really loves Tamla, Motown, Philly soul, and he brought that influence to us. So I think that it was more we were doing what we loved rather than thinking of what we should do. It just came naturally to us. It happened that we wouldn’t let them use their own instruments for one album, so they were forced to torture these tunes into things you could do on a rudimentary synthesizer. And it gave us an edge, because we were different.”

One of those tunes, “Don’t You Want Me,” spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July of 1982.

“The idea for the lyrics came from ‘A Star Is Born’ — the James Mason/Judy Garland version from 1954,” Oakey said. “I was forced to write some lyrics for it, and I like old films, so that was the idea. And also, we certainly had women in the band as well as men, and we thought it was a nice idea to trade off the vocals.”

Soft Cell, meanwhile, had their own rocket ride going with “Tainted Love,” a synthpop cover of an Ed Cobb-composed 1964 soul single from Gloria Jones that would go on to spend a onetime record 43 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 8. 

For Almond, it has been revelatory seeing how much the artistry of Soft Cell, and “Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret” in particular, has evolved in recent years beyond the American “one-hit wonder” stigma to become a creative touchstone for three generations of new music artists.

“It excited me to listen to it again in recent years, as for many years I didn’t listen to it and I came back to it when we performed the whole album in live shows and it surprised me how fresh and different it still was,” he said. “Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys told me how influential it was to them, that it was like a musical that told a story with a narrative, and I was so pleased he could get that. I think it’s grown better with time.”

And while it’s being marketed as a nostalgic tour, both The Human League and Soft Cell continue to create in the studio and write new material. 

Soft Cell, in fact, have a new album in the can called “Danceteria,” named after the legendary New York City club Almond would frequent in the early ’80s. Its impending release, however, has proven to be bittersweet as Almond’s longtime creative partner in Soft Cell, David Ball, passed away on Oct. 22, 2025 at 66. 

“We had just finished the new record and David Ball passed a few days after hearing it back for the first time, so it was a shock to us because he’d been in such good spirits and excited about the year ahead,” Almond said. “He’d been ill for a long while and our extra synth player Philip Larsen has had to stand in for him on many shows in recent years: though Dave always prepared and programmed the music. Philip has been a part of Soft Cell for a few years now and adds a lot. Of course I’ll keep the music alive, Dave had been creating music right up to the end and I wouldn’t be where I am today without his music and the success we both had together.”

The Human League, on the other hand, do not have a new album in the can, but Oakey assures fans the band is always tinkering with material despite the lack of a concrete timetable. 

“We are always working on new music,” he said. “How we get it out is the biggest question for us these days, because the money doesn’t flow from physical recordings. We can’t really afford a big producer at the moment, unless we work out how to do it in some clever way. Also, we don’t quite enjoy the set up where people take your songs, strip everything away from them, and give you back something similar. So we have been in negotiation with a couple of producers but we will see if we can get it done. We intend there to be a 10th Human League album.” 

As for Almond, he assures fans who want to hear the new Soft Cell music that the group will definitely come back around for a more complete performance following the Generations tour.

“As there are three bands and we are at the mercy of curfews, our sets have to be quite tight,” he explained. “People expect to hear the favourite songs but we will certainly nod to the new album and we plan to come back to California doing a show that’ll cover more musical ground.”