The Rise and Fade of Heaven 17: A Dissection of How Men Are

The story of Heaven 17 is a cautionary tale about the ruthless indifference of pop history. They were not hapless amateurs who stumbled into synthpop with a Casio and a dream. No, these were sharp-eyed operators—calculating, literate, and drenched in a veneer of sophistication that made them, for a time, seem like the true heirs to an electronic revolution.

But pop music is a war, and Heaven 17 were better strategists than they were soldiers. They drafted blueprints, constructed elaborate sonic frameworks, and then stood back, admiring their handiwork while the real victors—Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, and Depeche Mode—charged the gates and took the spoils.

The Landscape They Inherited

The early ’80s were a wild frontier. British music was shapeshifting at a blistering pace, scrambling to define a post-punk, post-disco, post-industrial reality. The New Romantic movement slithered in, and suddenly, plastic glamour and cold-wave synths weren’t just acceptable—they were necessary. Spandau Ballet dressed like colonial oppressors but sold ballads to the masses. Depeche Mode took Kraftwerk’s blueprint and injected it with sex, doom, and religious angst. Tears for Fears figured out the elusive formula of weighty emotion and radio-friendly hooks.

And Heaven 17? They started as the rogue intellectuals, defecting from The Human League with dreams of high-minded synthpop—music that could comment on capitalism while also thriving within it. Penthouse and Pavement was their declaration of war, a twitchy, funk-infused manifesto of ambition and critique. But while they were scheming, others were seizing. The Human League, now fronted by the icy charisma of Phil Oakey, rode Dare to international dominance. Meanwhile, Heaven 17 remained clever, remained engaged, but failed to launch into the same stratosphere.

Strengths and Weaknesses: The Heaven 17 Conundrum

There was never a lack of talent or vision. The problem was inertia. Heaven 17 wanted to be pop insurgents, but insurgents need to act, not theorize. They made a few radio-friendly smashes—Temptation remains a juggernaut—but they too often retreated into their own cerebral maze. Their music felt like an architectural model for a utopian city: dazzling to look at, but not yet inhabitable.

Where Depeche Mode summoned darkness and lust, where New Order turned melancholy into euphoria, where even Soft Cell smeared their decadence across the airwaves, Heaven 17 often sounded too composed, too careful. There was fire in their ideals, but the music? Too often cold steel.

How Men Are: The Pinnacle and the Pitfall

If The Luxury Gap flirted with success, How Men Are is where Heaven 17 either reached their apex or lost their grip, depending on how you see it. This is the band at their most ambitious, their most indulgent, their most determined to prove they were still in the game.

Tracks like Sunset Now and Flamedown tried to push the pop envelope, but instead, they felt strangely hollow—too polished to be rebellious, too angular to be inviting. And That’s No Lie is a seven-minute exercise in overreach, where intricate compositions threaten to suffocate any real emotional impact.

And yet, buried in the mix, you can hear the DNA of something great. The production is lush, the synth work intricate, the ideas noble. They had something, but it was a slippery, theoretical something—not the kind of raw, primal gut-punch that turns bands into legends.

The Conclusion: Not Underrated, but Worth Revisiting

Here’s the hard truth: Heaven 17 are not an unsung treasure. They did not change the game the way Kraftwerk, Bowie, or even their ex-bandmates in The Human League did. Their music is not the lost gospel of synthpop, nor a prophetic vision of the future.

But that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth your time. How Men Are may not be a masterpiece, but it’s a fascinating snapshot of a band caught in the transition from bold visionaries to pop survivors. There is value in that, in the ambition, in the sheer audacity of thinking they could outmaneuver the system while playing by its rules.

So, on some lazy Sunday morning, when the air is thick with nostalgia and the coffee is strong, put on How Men Are. Crank up Sunset Now, let the synths wash over you, and appreciate the strange, cerebral empire that Heaven 17 almost built.

Because sometimes, almost is more interesting than outright victory.