Susan Ann Sulley

Susan Ann Sulley (born 22 March 1963), formerly known as Susanne Sulley and Susan Ann Gayle, is an English singer who is one of the two female vocalists in the synth-pop band The Human League.

Sulley was born in Sheffield, UK, on 22 March 1963.

She spent all her early years in the Gleadless suburb of the city.

For her final education, she attended the city's Frecheville Comprehensive School from the late 1970s until mid-1981.

Her best friend from the age of 13 was fellow lifelong Sheffield resident and Frecheville student Joanne Catherall.

Born and raised in Sheffield, England, as a schoolgirl in 1980, Sulley (aged 17) and her friend Joanne Catherall were "discovered" in the Crazy Daisy Nightclub in Sheffield by Philip Oakey, the lead singer and a founding member of The Human League.

They soon were asked to provide full vocals by Oakey as an experiment.

Sulley is a joint business partner in the band, which still records and performs.

The Human League has dominated Sulley's life; she has been a singer all her adult life and has never had any other full-time job.

She explains: "Joanne and I weren't ambitious; we didn't want to be in a pop group. We were just two girls at school who wanted to go to university."

Whilst still at school in 1980, she had a part-time job in a Sheffield hairdressing salon and a casual summer job selling ice cream at a Sheffield cinema, the only jobs she has had in her life apart from music.

The Human League had recently split acrimoniously over creative differences, leaving only two of the original four members, Oakey and Adrian Wright, to continue.

Crucially, The Human League was contracted to a European tour starting within a week.

Already in debt to Virgin Records, Oakey had to recruit new band members in a matter of days for the tour or be sued by the tour's promoters, face bankruptcy, and see the end of the band.

Oakey went into Sheffield one evening to recruit a single female backing singer for the tour, needed to replace the original high backing vocals of the now departed Martyn Ware.

He immediately noticed Catherall and Sulley dancing together in the Crazy Daisy and now states that they stood out from all the other girls in the club due to their unique dress sense, immaculate make-up, and idiosyncratic but sophisticated dance moves.

Without preamble, Oakey asked both girls to join the tour as dancers and incidental vocalists.

Catherall now states that she knew it was a genuine offer, as Oakey was well known in Sheffield; she and Sulley already had tickets to see The Human League on the Doncaster leg of their tour.

Catherall and Sulley agreed to the offer immediately, despite having no singing or professional dancing experience.

However, the girls were 17 and 18 years old and the final decision regarding going on the tour lay with their parents.

The parents of both the girls were unhappy with the idea and initially refused to give their consent.

This was overturned reluctantly when Oakey, complete with his then trademark lop-sided haircut, red lipstick and high heeled shoes, visited both sets of parents to convince them that the girls would come to no harm.

Catherall and Sulley's school also agreed to the absence, as it was thought visiting Europe would be educational.

The first European tour of The Human League got underway with the two young recruits assigned to dancing and incidental vocal duties.

The girls at this stage were just guests in the group on a salary of £30 a week.

Although the tour was a success, the crowds were largely hostile to Catherall and Sulley, as fans had bought tickets for the original all male line-up.

Catherall recalls dodging several beer cans thrown at her during the tour and was often heckled.

During the tour, Oakey had experimented with the girls singing on a number of the original tracks and was impressed with the results; he was also impressed with the girls' professionalism and determination during the tour.

By early 1981, she was calling herself 'Susanne Sulley', a familiar amalgamation of her two first names, a nickname by which she had been casually known at school.

The group recorded Dare, their most commercially successful album to date, in 1981.

The release of the album also coincided with a steep rise in the use of music videos and the launch of MTV.

In the video for "Don't You Want Me", released in November as the fourth single from the album, Sulley plays a successful actress walking out on her bitter Svengali lover (played by Oakey), who laments her success and departure.

Set on a "film shoot" on a wet winter night, Sulley sings directly to the camera whilst walking through the atmospheric set, immaculately made up and wearing a distinctive trench coat.

The single, aided by the classic video, was a commercial breakthrough for the group, going to number one in the charts in both the UK and the US.

Sulley was still at school when Dare was recorded and often jokes that she "has never had a proper job in her life".

The international stardom that Dare brought was short-lived.

A stop-gap EP, Fascination!, was issued in America in 1983.

From these releases, the group had a number of top-ten singles in the UK and the US, including "(Keep Feeling) Fascination" and "Mirror Man", which both charted at number two in the UK.

The single "Human" from Crash was the group's last real commercial success of the decade, charting at number one in the US and number eight in the UK.

The group took three years to release their next full album, 1984's Hysteria.