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| Odd pair, but, damn, it worked. |
This single spent 43 consecutive weeks on Billboard’s Hot 100. That record no longer stands. Not even close, really.
The Hit
“We were living in a crummy Housing Association bedsit. The view from my bedroom window was the wasteland where the body of The Yorkshire Ripper’s last victim was found – there was still police tape on the site.”
- David Ball, 2018 interview, Classic Pop Magazine
That introduces the multiple incongruities around “Tainted Love,” one of the few natural pop songs Soft Cell ever wrote. The real/radio single opens with the unmistakable synth blast - three simple chords, the shortest of progressions – before Ball fills in the sound-scape with longer synth tones to ground it and the simplest electronic kick/snare you’re ever likely to hear. Marc Almond’s voice comes in, clear and cool, but also defiantly wounded; the synth blasts pulse into the verses, appropriately intrusive. It’s a little anti-melodic, musically, or rather Soft Cell rely on Almond to provide the melody – particularly in the extended version, which goes out on a reworking of The Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go.”
That last detail seems less out of place if/once you know “Tainted Love” is a cover of a largely-forgotten song Northern Soul singer named Gloria Jones. Even that has a whole “circle of life” aspect to it, in that both Ball and Almond were big fans of T. Rex back when, and Jones was romantically involved with Marc Bolan (and driving the relevant car, if memory serves) when he died.
According to at least one source (Wikipedia), “Tainted Love” also represented something of a last chance for Almond and Ball. After making a little noise in the “northern” scene, they signed to the UK label Phonogram and recorded, "Memorabilia" (which video features a certain famous, Cindy Ecstacy) a single that did all right on the club circuit (particularly in the States, oddly enough), but that didn’t impress the label so much. Soft Cell came back with “Tainted Love.” There they were, two lads just out of Leeds Polytechnic and here they had a No. 1 hit in 17 countries, some for nearly all of 1981. Apparently.
The Rest of the Story
The oddest thing about Soft Cell could be where they came up – Ball in Blackpool, UK, Almond in Southport. Both men figured that setting informed their sensibilities, if in expected ways. As Almond recounted to On: Yorkshire Magazine:
The Hit
“We were living in a crummy Housing Association bedsit. The view from my bedroom window was the wasteland where the body of The Yorkshire Ripper’s last victim was found – there was still police tape on the site.”
- David Ball, 2018 interview, Classic Pop Magazine
That introduces the multiple incongruities around “Tainted Love,” one of the few natural pop songs Soft Cell ever wrote. The real/radio single opens with the unmistakable synth blast - three simple chords, the shortest of progressions – before Ball fills in the sound-scape with longer synth tones to ground it and the simplest electronic kick/snare you’re ever likely to hear. Marc Almond’s voice comes in, clear and cool, but also defiantly wounded; the synth blasts pulse into the verses, appropriately intrusive. It’s a little anti-melodic, musically, or rather Soft Cell rely on Almond to provide the melody – particularly in the extended version, which goes out on a reworking of The Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go.”
That last detail seems less out of place if/once you know “Tainted Love” is a cover of a largely-forgotten song Northern Soul singer named Gloria Jones. Even that has a whole “circle of life” aspect to it, in that both Ball and Almond were big fans of T. Rex back when, and Jones was romantically involved with Marc Bolan (and driving the relevant car, if memory serves) when he died.
According to at least one source (Wikipedia), “Tainted Love” also represented something of a last chance for Almond and Ball. After making a little noise in the “northern” scene, they signed to the UK label Phonogram and recorded, "Memorabilia" (which video features a certain famous, Cindy Ecstacy) a single that did all right on the club circuit (particularly in the States, oddly enough), but that didn’t impress the label so much. Soft Cell came back with “Tainted Love.” There they were, two lads just out of Leeds Polytechnic and here they had a No. 1 hit in 17 countries, some for nearly all of 1981. Apparently.
The Rest of the Story
The oddest thing about Soft Cell could be where they came up – Ball in Blackpool, UK, Almond in Southport. Both men figured that setting informed their sensibilities, if in expected ways. As Almond recounted to On: Yorkshire Magazine:
