SOFT CELL – “Tainted Love”
Soft Cell’s reinvention of “Tainted Love” is based on a simple shift in emphasis. In the Gloria Jones recording, the point of the record is the love – it’s troubled, besmirched, but Gloria is strong enough to fight her way past that – or carry through her intention to quit. Either way the decision’s hers. For Marc Almond, the point is the taint. Without the taint, there is no love. “Once I ran to you, now I’ll run from you” – but he’s not running yet.
What Almond’s rough, deceptively slight voice brought to the song was vulnerability: he understood that a singer surrounded by machines could sound naked, shockingly exposed and human. In the filmed performances of “Tainted Love” on Top of The Pops, Almond looks gamine and frail, bangles heavy on skinny arms, his handclaps a gesture at once magnetic and oddly pitiful. He’s dwarfed by the sound around him while still its centre.
And the sound itself is a mix of the sleek and the rusty – cutting-edge machines that need to be jump-started into life, as in the record’s iconic intro: that double synth stab and then a rat-a-tat of hissing valves as the rhythm starts up. Like Dave Ball’s astonishingly sleazy moustache, it adds to the track’s seediness, its sinister edge. It’s a seediness which can feel slightly overplayed, teetering on kitsch: something Soft Cell were certainly aware of – like their English industrial mates, they were interested in what happens when your pleasure and humour and arousal and discomfort receptors get all mixed up. But that side to the band is more apparent on stuff like “Sex Dwarf” than it is on this, where the strength of the song is a challenge for Almond to rise to. And he does – when he sings “Touch me baby, tainted love”, his hollowed-out vowels are as chilling an evocation of need as the charts have seen.
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Tom in FT / Popular • Pop • 2,251 views • Share/Save
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.
(*sigh* apparently i am incapable of writing what i mean today:
“the allure of cheese depends on it being onion (and vice versa)” shd read something like “the allure of cheese depends on it being IMPOSSIBLE IN THAT INSTANT TO SEPARATE FROM onion (and vice versa)”)
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.
#24, 25, 27 – I bet you’ll be obsessing over my “cheese/onion” concept for the ever after, ’cause the world is like a great big onion. Did you not know that?
#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?
so far i have discovered 30 versions of “tainted love” — are they all the same song tho? i shall tell you shortly!
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
and kwan and dimitris korgialas’s tainted love is a completely difft song
For what it’s worth, Tainted Love is inextricably intertwined with memories of Sharon Day, who lived two doors away from me, hurtling through a turbulent transformation into adolescence. She started wearing two streaks of rouge, much to the consternation of her parents, and was clearly looking for An Event to show her peers that she was no longer the swotty long-haired square of yore. A one-off lunchtime disco dancing competition in the school hall was the perfect opportunity for her to shine. She unveiled her new hair, (just like Marc Almond’s) and gold sequinned dress, and choreographed her own routine to Tainted Love, which mostly comprised of joining her fists together and shaking what appeared to be imaginary coffee beans during the two-note synth signature. The whole school thought it was the funniest thing ever, and poor Sharon had to try harder to show that she had put her innocent Sandra Dee years behind her. Hence, the nickname “Sharon Day – Easy Lay” in ensuing years. Poor thing.
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?).
re. overplay – could it be that there are some songs which respond to overplay better than others, though? I was always a bit surprised that “Tainted Love” became so ubiquitous, because of its seedy, nocturnal feel: it seems like the sort of song which ought to be a private pleasure, laughable though that is for a huge smash hit.
But for me that helps it resist overexposure.
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.
was just discussing the skeez of “repeat-play tolerance” with my editor (re: the lion king, which he has sat thru w. his tinies 25+ times, and still rather likes) (contrast: the musical, which he was v bored by)
obviously we are tiptoing into “stands the test of time” abomination-territory BUT i am not so allergic to this concept in the negative sense — “can still stand after seen it 5496872349586 times” is indeed a material quality, tho i’d like to know its specifics, rather than some airy claim attributing such success to “genius” or “artistry” or whatevs
Yes the test of repetition and the test of time are surely different things!
sounds like there might be a nice complex graph in this, viz frequency heard v time from inception v ‘depreciation’
Material factor in “Tainted Love”’s passing the ToR: it’s SHORT! (Obviously this doesn’t apply to the Lion King).
(I should possibly do some logging of which Bob The Builder/Teletubbies etc episodes I can still tolerate.)
Overexposed or not, this is a terrific single.
A&B had already demonstrated their Northern Soul credentials on debut single, “Memorabilia” which lifts wholesale from Vicki Sue Robinson’s classic mid 70s stomper “Turn The Beat Around”.
For the follow up they went the whole hog and delivered the fourth chart-topping cover of 1981 (a fifth is just around the corner).
And they brought to “Tainted Love” the things that all too briefly made Soft Cell one of the most engaging and thrilling of early 80s pop acts – equal parts naive and amateurish to inspired and inspiring.
Ball’s synth riff is the record’s highlight for me. It just sounded like nothing I’d before. Stark, eerie, danceable but not funky. Warm and pulsing but cold and unemotional. Kraftwerk and Moroder on a shoestring.
Hearing it in Neros, the under 18s disco I used to go to on a Monday night, was always a thrilling experience, particularly when the DJ let the track segue into “Where Did Our Love Go.” The instrumental middle part with its ominous drones and cleverly shifting overlap of the two riffs was quite moving when I first heard it – almost a magical experience.
Maybe it’s hard to write about such iconic records with any freshness in 2009. I don’t know – but when I comment I try to capture how I felt about the track at the time, when I first heard it, and also how I feel about it now.
Today, I don’t think “Non Stop Erotic Cabaret” holds up quite as well as I remember it – but “Tainted Love” sounds more than ever like Soft Cell’s finest hour.
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).
on the reverse on one of the 12″ they try and do the synthpop-on-a-shoestring remake/remodel to a hendrix song which is ambitious beyond boldness but — sadly — not that grebt iirc
forget which hendrix song tho: i shall dig it out when i get home from work
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).
Cindy Ecstasy, ah yes. Her ‘performance’ would have stopped Torch from getting a 10 if it had managed to chart one place higher. I desperately want to mention something similar about the Sheffield Song but I won’t. Oh, I just did.
Where The Heart Is was the single after What, wasn’t it? A trifle harsh, Conrad. Maybe it didn’t have a killer hook but again the 12″ mix was marvellous with a proto-house piano motif and big, yearning analogue chords. Also one of their best lyrics.
The Art Of Falling Apart got across the board 5 star reviews from memory (NSEC certainly didn’t, there was a decided air of cynicism around it). I tried and I tried, but no, and I think “history” judges NSEC much the better. Never got to hear the last album.
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.
I did get “Numbers” 12″, it came with a free copy of “Tainted Love” 12″.
Didn’t Marc end up crushing a grape with malice at Phonogram’s offices?
‘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!
I love Cindy Ecstasy’s vocal on ‘Torch’ – for me it’s the best bit about it – and their best single. I have their Greatest Hits CD and I always enjoy listening to it. There’s something about its combination of amateur simplicity and overheated enthusiasm that I always find rewarding.
…oh, and btw the TL sleeve brings back so many memories of early 80s fashion illustration – again, it’s cheap and cheerful
I love everything Marc Almond did for the first few years and was a proud “Gutterheart”. This was superb. I felt their best single was “Soul inside” but their star status had dried up by then. I carried on buying his records and even bought three copies of “Black heart” to get the three different postcards. The single was reviewed on “Round Table” by the ever so successful Tracie Young, who laid into him heavily as being tuneless and totally untalented. I assume she was reading her own bio at the time.
Who else can remember Marc on the Oxford Road Show when his microphone was breaking up ? Freddie Starr would have been proud of it and “Where the heart is” was almost spoiled by his strop as he threw the deviant piece of equipment to the floor in a way that only a limp-wristed drama queen could have done.
This is in some ways hard to talk about because, as with ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ two years previously, this was a song where I felt my understanding of pop music deepen, drifting further into frightening and ambiguous grown-up territory.
I think that this is may have been the most child-unfriendly number one for a long time. The sight of Soft Cell on Top of the Pops was something which I wasn’t prepared for, and didn’t know how to process. With characters like Numan or Bowie there was clearly an element of dressing-up and costume, wheras the scowling likes of Kevin Rowland or Paul Weller looked like people you’d see on the street. But this weedy-looking character in bracelets and a black T-shirt without sleeves, he didn’t look like he was pleased to be being filmed, he didn’t look like he was enjoying dancing, but he didn’t look like he was angry about anything specific… Also, you could easily think that he was a woman, although he obviously wasn’t pretending to be one.
And then you noticed the other one, unsmiling, as stocky as the singer was spindly, looking morose, like somebody in a minor and taxing position of authority – a prison officer or a hospital orderly, say.
This wasn’t what pop stars were supposed to look like! But then again, as a boy who was overserious, solitary, weak and tempramental, there also seemed something rather uncomfortably personal about all of this.
And that was before I started to notice their song – clang! clang! And the singer’s voice was something rather slimy to listen to, not at all ingratiating the listener.
Wow, I love Soft Cell. They seem to be the group that friends associate me with most. Like a few bands of this time (The Beat, Altered Images), their career seems ideal to me – Don’t hang around too long, release a lot of singles, some of which everybody knows and some of which only pop people know but all of which are very good, knock out three very different albums, each of which show the same unique view of the world from a different angle, in three years.
The documentary where Marc talks about Cindy Ecstacy was in BBC2’s excellent ‘Young Guns’ series, which also featured The Human League, The Smiths, Bananarama, Spandau Ballet and Culture Club.
Re #48, ‘Where The Heart Is’ is, I think, my favourite Top of the Pops performance ever, the alternating pink and blue lighting, the distressing and compelling nature of both the tale and the performance of the teller. That churning, queasy, compressed synth arrangement is just right for the material too, I’d maintain.
oh bah i forgot to look out and play that soft cell 12″ — will try and do so tonight
Can’t believe I haven’t commented on this yet.
I love it. At the time I loved it and hated it in about equal measure. I think that’s because Marc Almond’s tortured delivery and the jagged, rather sinister accompaniment chimed with my own tormented state at the time. Things were getting very difficult for me and they’d go on doing so for another couple of years yet before things got better again.
Now I love it unambiguously because of that association, but also because Marc’s vocal rings out clearly across the years and it shines out to as the outstanding number one of that year. By putting an original twist on what was a good song in the first place and making it soar, it meets one of my possible criteria for a ten but it doesn’t quite get there for me so a 9 feels about right and no disgrace.
This is fantastic, but I love most Soft Cell singles. So stark, so emotional (baby)! The double-klaxon marks it as a great of its time – an undeniable chart-topper – and although Almond’s winning sleaze sounded grimier elsewhere, this is still uncomfortable, somewhere you suspect you shouldn’t be.
I guess I slightly prefer ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’, a track my playground cohorts baulked at because it was so… open. You’re not meant to engage in that sort of stuff when you’re second toughest in the infants.
TOTPWatch: Soft Cell performed ‘Tainted Love’ on Top Of The Pops on three occasions;
13 August 1981. Also in the studio that week were; Duran Duran, Aneka and Shakin’ Stevens, plus Legs & Co’s interpretation of ‘Startrax Club Disco’. The host was Simon Bates.
27 August 1981. Also in the studio that week were; Startrax, The Nolans, Ultravox, Genesis and Aneka, plus Legs & Co’s interpretation of ‘Hold On Tight’. Richard Skinner was the host.
3 September 1981. To celebrate being number one, Soft Cell decided to perform in a cage for this edition. Also in the studio in a great week were; Modern Romance, John Foxx, Bucks Fizz, The Teardrop Explodes, Dollar and OMD, plus Legs & Co’s interpretation of ‘Slow Hand”. The host was Peter Powell.
For what it’s worth, even Gloria Jones herself is on record as saying that Soft Cell’s cover was a significant improvement! That said, this is now so over-played that I’d personally opt for Gloria’s version every time, one-dimensional THWACK-BASH arrangement and all.
But really, this is all about about the 12″ version, and specifically about the strange, moody, slowly shifting instrumental segue into “Where Did Our Love Go”. I once heard a DJ in a Belgium nightclub overlay almost all of Peggy Lee’s “Fever” over the top of the segue section, to superb effect – a mix which I’ve tried re-creating on my PC, but have never quite got 100% right.
And while we’re talking 12″ medleys: this is also indivisible from the Human League’s “Hard Times”/”Love Action”, which was released around the same time, with an equally terrific instrumental dub on the B-side. (Gotta love those extreme FX on “Tainted Dub”.) Those two 12″s absolutely sum up the summer of 1981 for me.
And of course, Almond’s great achievement with “Tainted Love” was to significantly darken the mood of the lyric, conjuring up unspoken associations with Filthy Gay Bumsex and SM power dynamics gone sour. So hurrah for that…