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"The Lebanon" is a song by the British synthpop group The Human League, released as a single in April 1984. Written jointly by lead singer Philip Oakey and keyboard player Jo Callis, it was the first single from the band's fourth album ''Hysteria'', and was recorded at AIR Studios between 1983-1984. == Background == The song was conceived, written and recorded at a time when the band was under considerable pressure to follow up the enormous international success of their previous album, ''Dare''. The band had taken up residence in the £1000 a day AIR Studios; they were there a full year and were agonizing (and arguing) over every note of every track.〔Human League Biography - www.League-online.com/Bio〕 With its heavy use of bass and rock guitars, "The Lebanon" was a radical departure from the established synthpop sound of the Human League. Though the song does employ some keyboards, the use of guitars by the band was not lost on music critics who brought up the "no guitars rule" that the band had publicly adopted in 1981. The lyrics were an attempt to make a statement on the Lebanese civil war which had been exacerbated by Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon of 1982. In a television interview, Human League member Philip Adrian Wright commented that Oakey's politically-charged lyrics were written specifically about the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Human League singer Susan Ann Sulley said of the song that the band "wanted to speak up for the little people" and say something about the situation in Lebanon at the time, and that the band was not trying to be political for the sake of it.〔Susan Ann Gayle Interview 2005 Virgin Records (Best Of DVD)〕 The band were criticized at the time for being banal and "out of their depth",〔No 1 Magazine 1984〕 but in a retrospective review, AllMusic journalist Andy Kellman wrote that the song "looks atrocious on paper but sounds fantastic". In 2007, the lines "Before he leaves the camp he stops, He scans the world outside, And where there used to be some shops, Is where the snipers sometimes hide" were voted as the ninth-worst lyrics of all time, in an NME reader poll. Oakey took the criticism in good humour. "The Lebanon" was released as a UK single in April 1984. It failed to replicate the Top 3 success of the band's previous singles "(Keep Feeling) Fascination" and "Mirror Man", only reaching number 11 in the UK Singles chart〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Artist Chart History - The Human League )〕 and number 64 in the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, becoming their lowest-charting single ever in the United States.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Human League - Chart history )〕 The track has frequently been played by the band live and is nearly always on their set list. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Lebanon (song)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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