After spending two years recording their fourth album Hysteria, which met with only moderate commercial success, the band struggled to record further material. They recorded some new material with producer Colin Thurston at their 24-track studio in Sheffield and later Utopia Studios in London, who previously worked with them on the Reproduction album. However, the sessions did not work out after four months, partly because of the slow progress, Thurston's and the band's combined indecisiveness and the negative atmosphere surrounding the sessions. Once Thurston left for his honeymoon, he let his assistant Paul Rabiger take over the rest of the sessions, who would be credited for keyboards and arrangements on the final album; even so, the sessions continued to remain slow and unfocused without a producer at the helm.
By 1985, musician/songwriter Jo Callis had left the group. Virgin Records, worried by the lack of progress in one of their leading acts, called the band principals to a meeting. As the problem was perceived to be the lack of production progress, it was suggested that the band take up an offer to work with Minneapolis-based production duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Jam and Lewis had written for and produced the S.O.S. Band, Cherrelle and Alexander O'Neal, and had just finished working on Janet Jackson's breakthrough album Control. They had developed an interest in the Human League after the success of their US releases; they were also seeking an opportunity to cross over into mainstream pop and saw the Human League as the perfect opportunity.
In February 1986, the Human League flew to Minneapolis to work at Flyte Time Studios with Jam and Lewis, who finally helped bring more focus and direction to the album. The basic arrangements for the band's material were worked out in England using sequencers, which Jam and Lewis had re-cut with the parts all played by hand for a more natural feel: the liner notes reinforce that "there are no sequencers on this album." According to Oakey in a 1986 interview, for the band's songs, only the drum machine parts were kept from the London recordings with Thurston and Rabiger.
Unlike on previous albums, the band allowed Jam and Lewis assume control as producers, with Philip Oakey adding that the band "had enough respect for them musically" and felt were talented enough to take on the responsibility. Jam and Lewis got along well with the band for the most part, and helped get the record down more quickly and efficiently under their direction. The band stayed in Minneapolis for four months in total: three weeks for basic tracks, followed by two months on vocals and the rest for mixing their own songs. However, it was towards the end that disagreements arose with Jam and Lewis, resulting in Oakey pulling the band out of the sessions. They returned to Sheffield, leaving Jam and Lewis to take over and mix the four songs they contributed.
Keyboard players Philip Adrian Wright and Ian Burden also had been sidelined by Jam and Lewis. "I really wished we were back in Berkshire (where Dare was recorded) with Martin Rushent, making a Human League album," Burden recalled. "It was gratifying to get a US number one with 'Human', but otherwise the album was a crashing bore in every sense." Wright would not recover from the humiliation and left the band upon their return to the UK. Burden eventually quit in 1987.
The album name was taken from a moment in the studio during the recording. Oakey described it thus: It's from a crash cymbal, because it's a disco album again with lots of cymbals. One day somebody said "what sorts of cymbals do you want, a ride or a crash?", and we thought, "what a great title!"
The album quickly became an unexpected success. One of Jam and Lewis's compositions, "Human", became the Human League's second number-one single on the US Billboard Hot 100 and their first UK top 10 single in over three years, peaking at number eight. Follow-ups "I Need Your Loving" and the 1988 release "Love Is All That Matters" were less successful, failing to reach the UK top 40. The album itself peaked at number seven in the UK (where it has been certified Gold for shipments in excess of 100,000 copies) and number 24 on the US Billboard 200. Oakey stated his discomfort with the record in 1995, saying: "The Jam and Lewis album [Crash] was just like being a puppet for four months. It was interesting to pick yourself out of the industrial north of England and dump yourself in Minneapolis. Great experience, but it just wasn't our album."
The out-of-focus cover photo was used to disguise the fact that it was taken at very short notice to meet a print deadline, after the disaster of the planned original photo shoot. Oakey originally wanted to return to the Vogue cover style of Dare artwork for Crash. He had persuaded Virgin Records to finance a studio photo shoot of the band with Vogue's Paris-based photographer Guy Bourdin. The band were flown out to Paris for the two-day photo sessions. However, on arriving at Bourdin's studio, it became apparent that he was only interested in photographing the two female vocalists Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall. Matters came to a head when Bourdin ordered Sulley to do a handstand wearing a mini-skirt, a pose she considered inappropriate. After she turned on Bourdin and the two clashed angrily, the photographer refused to work with the band and they walked out of the session with the loss of all fees. Oakey would later comment that "we spent two days there, it took nine hours to set up one photograph and I daren't tell you how much money we spent.
