The story of “Tainted love” by Soft Cell

He died at 66 Dave Ballhalf of Soft Cell: the duo is best known for the electronic cover of “Tainted love”, included on their debut album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. To remember it, let’s retrace the history of this song, from the original by Gloria Jones (1964), with this extract from the book “Cover and over again”, by Joyello Triolo.

An unmissable classic in Northern Soul disc jockey set lists, “Tainted Love” is a song written by Ed Cobb in 1964 which, like many other initially underrated songs, has a rather bizarre history.
Originally no one saw its commercial potential and after being rejected by The Standells, it ended up being assigned to a young R&B prospect called Gloria Jones, in need of a song to put on side B of a 45 called “My Bad Boy’s Comin’ Home”. The main song, however, was so ineffective that it smoothed out all the charts, including the thematic ones dedicated to black music, and the album quickly ended up forgotten.

Gloria Jones

It was an English DJ, Richard Searling, who rediscovered it, buying the record at a flea market and making “Tainted Love” a must-have in his Northern Soul-themed setlists. The typical word of mouth among enthusiasts thus triggered a kind of treasure hunt in search of that old, forgotten single.
Word of this revival also reached Gloria Jones herself who thought she would take advantage of the moment by rerecording the song under the aegis of her boyfriend at the time, Marc Bolan of T. Rex, but it didn’t work.

Soft Cell

Another English DJ, Ian “Frank” Derwhirst, deserves credit for introducing the song to Soft Cell during the period in which singer Marc Almond worked in the cloakroom in the club where Derwhirst played records. Almond had asked the DJ to copy the song onto a cassette for him because, although the new version was familiar to him, he liked the original which he couldn’t find better.
At that time the singer had already formed Soft Cell with his high school friend Dave Ball and together they had self-produced an EP in 2000 copies which, due to the good reviews in some fanzines, allowed them to receive the attention of Stevo Pearce when he was thinking of opening one of the most peculiar record labels of that period, Some Bizarre. Pearce contacted Soft Cell, asked them for a piece to include in the compilation that inaugurated the label and, after the debut of the single “Memorabilia”, convinced them to make an album.

But, since Pearce’s small label enjoyed Phonogram distribution, under pressure from the latter, before the transition to 33 rpm, there was a need for a hit single (which “Memorabilia” had not been) and they asked Soft Cell to record a cover of soul music, certain of a response due to the popularity that this genre had among English kids. Almond and Ball chose “The Night”, an old hit by Frankie Valli, which however didn’t seem to work very well, so the singer remembered “Tainted Love” which turned out to be the winning choice, becoming one of the biggest commercial successes of all time and remaining in the “Billboard” charts for 43 consecutive weeks, ending up representing a record documented in the Guinness Book of Records.

Soft Cell’s recording aimed to keep the original spirit of the song unchanged, so that it did not lose its soulful charge, but at the same time had a modern sound, supported by the NED Synclavier considered, at the time, the best system for the creation of electro-pop music. The new version of “Tainted Love” was presented with a slower pace compared to the original and the key changed from C to G to better adapt to Marc Almond’s voice and the results were surprising: number 1 in many countries around the world, including Australia, Belgium, Spain, France, Holland, Sweden, Germany, USA and, obviously, Great Britain.

Over 200 covers of “Tainted Love” are documented, of which the best known is that of Marilyn Manson in 2001.

This text is taken, courtesy of Crac Edizioni, from the book “Cover and over again”, by Joyello Triolo.