SOFT CELL – "Tainted Love"

While I would have agreed with you on this a while ago, for me this is a record that’s severely been damaged by overexposure, to the extent I find it quite annoying. I’d much rather hear the original, or Memorabilia, or Torch, or Bedsitter, or Say Hello Wave Goodbye than this.

Yeah as I said elsewhere I think all right-thinking people love both this and the original (forget all subsequent versions tho from Impedance to Marilyn Manson…obv Rihanna’s ‘SOS’ doesn’t count) and this is definitely how to do a cover – one of the greatest examples perhaps – whatever sense of “soul” is lost vocally (not that Almond doesn’t deliver his own take on this concept well…find it difficult to measure tho) we gain a more powerful representation of the song’s message through the stark, sinister synth sounds whereas in the original the music remains fairly upbeat and jaunty.

Actually, all the other covers/interpolations I’ve heard have been botch jobs as well. Rihanna’s ‘SOS’ is one of her weakest singles, the sample is used so clunkingly and blaringly, and it buries her completely. The line “Y-O-U-R making this hard” is good to laugh at though; as RiRi herself put it in a later single, “dumb-dumb-de-dumb, dumb-dumb-de-dumb-dumb”.

The Pussycat Dolls’ version is OK but really their own material is so much better than any of the weird cabaret covers on their first album. Marilyn Manson’s version is probably his best moment to date but that is b/c he is total shit, obv, and the fact that even he didn’t ruin it says much for the song’s inherent strength.

Lex you say they botched it but it sounds as if to you the only way to cover this song well would be to do it in pretty much exactly the same style as the original?

But the instrumentation on the original is so much better! thr horns! The jittery beat! The frantic tempo! And you still get the DUN-DUN except it’s footloose and fancy-free, whereas w/Soft Cell it’s more like THUD THUD and clunky.

Oh this is a ten for me. This and Ghost Town was the sound of a gloriously outdoorsy summer for me. We had some kids down the street who were a few years older and would pump music into the garden from their dads stereo and I remember this wafting over the fences and just loving it. I remember asking to buy it with my tiny pocket money and my mum telling me it would be a waste and then distracting me with an ice cream or something. But it did turn up on a year end compilation (a buy one get one free which I cannot for the life of me remember). Again it was one of those tracks which I knew nothing about and oddly when I finally heard the Gloria Jones version I kind of had the opposite reaction to the Lex. It clearly exists within the Soft Cell version, but seems antsily shuffly compared to the gleaming chassis of Soft Cell.

I found later Marc Almond a massive let down because of this high benchmark to start off with.

This is one of those records where I wouldn’t change a single note, as every sound on the record is well-nigh perfect. I particularly love the way the two honks of synth that stab into the riff, just before the vocal kicks in, sound out of place at first, but you realise immediately afterwards how they fit into the whole – a bit like the percussion on “Honky Tonk Women”.

Wasn’t this the record that instigated the “Second British Invasion” in the US charts, with the longest ever run in the Billboard Hot 100? On Channel 4’s list of the all-time UK top 100 singles, this was placed 57th, making it the biggest seller of the 80s so far (to be overtaken at Christmas by the abovementioned Sheffield band). Channel 4 interviewed Gloria Jones, who said with an “OK, you got me guys” sort of shrug that Soft Cell’s version was better than hers. I wouldn’t necessarily agree – they both do a great job with very different aims in mind.

Geoff at #2 mentions their other big hits – uniquely I think, their first five singles peaked at 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 though not in that order – with the exception of “What”, which I thought was gorgeous. “Bedsitter” would have been a good soundtrack to my life in New Cross a few years later, even though I didn’t go to the same kind of clubs Marc would have!

I was otherwise engaged while this was at the top. Taking advantage of the fact that you get more freedom as a student than anytime before or after, I combined the family holiday that summer (which none of us could know was the last family holiday we’d ever have) with trips further afield. During the summer term I’d been invited to an event at the St Ives music festival in September, and in July I gave a Swiss family a guided tour of Tintagel in return for a lift and they invited me to visit them in Zurich. So beginning on Bank Holiday Monday, the day before “Tainted Love” hit number one, I set out to do the most adventurous (or plain foolhardy) thing I’d ever done –spent a fortnight hitch-hiking to Paris, then to Zurich to visit the family, then to Heidelberg for a firework display, back to the UK through Belgium and west to St Ives before returning home. It was while waiting for a lift out of Dover that I heard the next number one for the first time – and for a moment thought of heading back across the Channel…

Great Quotes Coined While This Was Number One (an occasional series):
“Maggie Thatcher, your boys took a hell of a beating” – commentator Bjorge Lillelien after England lost 2-1 to Norway in a World Cup qualifier on 9 September.

I’ve just listened to the Gloria Jones version for the first time in years and I have to say it’s a great vocal performance but the backing seems pedestrian to me in comparison to the great Motown and Stax hits of the same era. I think LondonLee is right about the unvarying beat.

The Soft Cell version would be a contender for a 10 with me, although had Say Hello Wave Goodbye got to the top that would definitely have got a 10 from me. Non Stop Erotic Cabaret would be a 10 as an album too.

I’ve heard very little from the other Soft Cell albums – how do they compare?

Ah, this is wonderful, one of the greatest cover versions ever.

I was thinking about their b-side It’s A Dog’s Life (Where The Heart Is, their first flop, was the A-side) the other day – it’s taken me 25 years to realise that the lines,

‘Oh no it’s another disease and you’ve just got rid of the last. You were beginning to feel OK and the friends you gave it to are speaking to you again’

probably don’t concern the common cold. Tainted love indeed.

having just told peter off on another thread, can i just say that — will i rather dislike the modern young prson’s category “cheese” — i very much like his “cheese versus onion” dialectic!

that said: the whole content of SC’s “tainted love” — lyrical content and synth-pop form — is surely declaring that the allure of cheese depends on it being onion (and vice versa)

Inescapable and unbearable – I think I liked it okay when I first heard it but before I got the chance to love it I’d heard it too many times. Should be right up my alley but I can’t even bring myself to listen to it now before I write this because I am so thoroughly sick of the song. None of that is Soft Cell’s fault but there it is, overplay killed this one dead.

i love this performance even more now than I did at the time – it never fails to cheer me up. I’m sure that the Gloria Jones ‘original’ has its merits but this is still the best version for me. I always assume that the interpretation owes something to Suicide in terms of its instrumentation and mood although David Ball is a big dance music fan.
I remember Marc Almond’s effete persona was a source of profound irritation to some of my more macho acquaintances – I’m not sure that there had been such an openly camp perfomer at number 1 for a while. I watched the video on youtube recently and found it hilarious – like a sleazy version of a Crackerjack sketch. (I’m becoming a bit worried about my repeated use of Crackerjack as a cultural benchmark – if I had been a bit younger I think I’d be referencing Tiswas) I hadn’t realised that MTV had started a month prior to TL getting to Number 1 in the UK so wonder if the video played a part in its US success.

#22 I meant It’s A Mug’s Game. Got it mixed up with a Gentle Giant song. Still, prog/electropop – it’s all synths innit?

ok rather disappointly the one by “blue øyster cült”, “the clash” and “the ramones” are in fact by soft cell 🙁

still i think there’s still a good 25 here — inc.a reggae one by ras shiloh

I’m a bit disappointed with so many comments about ‘overkill’ as we’re talking about number ones after all. A HUGE number of the entries up to this point are overexposed (every Beatles entry bar Ballad Of John & Yoko for instance) – kinda goes without saying.

But, Tainted Love. Unlike Are Friends Electric this didn’t sound remotely steam-driven at the time. Very sleek, with a minimalism borrowed from Suicide that creates a stark, delicately menacing backdrop, allowing more room for emotional manoeuvre in the vocal than the original’s chunky sub-Tamla stomp.

This was punk’s true legacy for me, having (fortunately) been a tad too young to get hooked by the Lurkers or The Cortinas. Tainted Love could never have been recorded, got released, or got airplay pre-punk.

It is incredibly simple, clearly put together by a pair of amateurs who could barely play or sing, but made the very most of what they knew, had a great idea, and got it across beautifully. I was amazed how basic the whole of Non Stop Erotic Cabaret sounded when I heard the recent re-issue. The fake party noises on Chips On My Shoulder almost sound sarcastic – Almond and Ball attempting to create a frenetic atmosphere as they play to an empty dancefloor.

(Though it’s also conceivable that their great bonhomie was because they were the only people in Britain who knew about MDMA back then, as in Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing – or is my chronology slightly out?).

Also we’re now coming into the era where a significant proportion of these tracks still get regular play in nightclubs as well as at wedding discos etc. Encountering the Beatles without wanting to is actually less likely (I’d say) than a chance encounter with “Tainted Love” or the Sheffield Song.

Erithian – like your “Honky Tonk Women” comparison at #18.

On the strength of “TL” I purchased “Non Stop Erotic Cabaret” and all the subsequent Soft Cell singles until “What!”

(Actually, their chart performance was even stronger than you recollect – 1, 4, 3, 2 and 3. A great run that was brought to a halt when they stopped being a pop act and started taking themselves a bit too seriously – the first single from “The Art of Falling Apart”, which conspicuously avoided anything so trivial as a melody failed to make the Top 20).

I think it was Purple Haze wasn’t it? In fact, from recollection possibly a medley with Hey Joe (!)
Not their finest hour.

Lineman, #36, you are spot on with your chronology. I remember watching an interview with Marc Almond where he was fondly recollecting the out-of-control rollercoaster that Soft Cell so quickly became in 1982. Getting their drug dealer in to sing on one of their singles being one of the many highlights! (Cindy Ecstasy on “Torch” – possibly the first overt pop reference to MDMA right there).

Maybe I am being a bit harsh about “Where The Heart Is” but it was just such a disappointment after NSEC. A big part of that was due to the loss of the minimal electronic sound of the earlier material.

I think Marc’s Scott Walker obsession led Dave Ball to try and create mini-orchestras with the backing – which served only to flatten the sound and highlight the flaws in the writing.

‘Where Was Your Heart When You Needed It Most?’ may be Soft Cell at their darkest.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=sFC7yNNuDXM

Ditto ‘Disease And Desire’ from the remastered version, which also includes their version of the ‘007’ theme – not heard this!