"The talent" has fled The Human League. The singer with the hair and the other bloke recruit a couple of girls at a disco and hit the studio. We would have been happy with something less than humiliation.
Instead they deliver an electropop masterpiece so massive people are still quoting it in petrol stations 25 years later.

Drug addled "experimental" band, who up till now have been a a stranger to any actual tunes, lose a key member, disappear into the countryside and deliver something lovely.

... by just such thoughts whilst watching BB4 doc on making of Screamadelica by Primal Scream, head and shoulders above their previous offerings, a seas of mediocraty they heartily plunged back into subsequently. Chapeau to Andy Wettheral

Think back to "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore"

Then think of "Clara" or "The Cockfighter". Even "Next". Not quite the same. And don't even get me started on "Pola X" or "And Who Shall Go The Ball", two of the most challenging and listener unfriendly records ever released.

But I remember my friends and I all being shocked thrice over when:
(a) Bernard Butler walked out of Suede;
(b) They recruited a 17-year-old guitarist and a keyboard player who seemed to actually be black-&-white to replace him; and
(c) The ensuing album, 'Coming Up', was monumentally ace.

All good stuff.

said Peter Jenner after Syd Barrett left Pink Floyd. "Not much chance of the rest of them making anything decent."

... up till Meddle though. I will never forgive them for Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast.

That a pop duo formed in 1979, from the ashes of Stackridge, would go on to write, record and release such a classic as Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime. Over the years this has been recorded by a diverse bunch of artists and became a number one dance track for Marc et Claude in 2000. More recently the track has been covered by Glasvegas and Sharon Corr. It featured in the film Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, sung by Beck (see clip below). I saw Stackridge at the weekend and James Warren still sings his most famous song. Goosebumps time.

Linking to another of today's threads and allowing me to bang on about New Order yet again, who would have thought that a band who had lost its lead singer and produced an album as monotone and directionless as Movement, would have gone on to produce three singles as brilliant as Everything's Gone Green, Temptation and Blue Monday (though the clues were there in Procession) and then a groundbreaking album like Power, Corruption and Lies...?