1981 Soft Cell: Tainted Love

The early eighties were fertile stamping ground for a new generation of electronic, synthesiser based bands raised on a heady cocktail of Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder megamixes. Of the main players, OMD, Human League, Depeche Mode et al would go on to bigger things but it was Soft Cell who were the first to of the breed to reach number one with this re-invention of Gloria Jones' classic Northern Soul belter.

While Jones attacked the song with full R&B gusto, Soft Cell stripped it down to it's chassis and rebuilt it around a driving yet remarkably spaced out framework of handclapping, electronic clatter and whipcracking drum loops with Almond's keening vocal filling in the blanks where the music fell silent. And it's this vocal that injects the humanity into the machine and elevates the track above novelty status.

Because for all the pioneering of the arrangement, it still skirts perilously close to gimmicky, and even in 1981 it sounded a bit too much like Dave Ball had just received a synthesiser for Christmas and wanted to show how many different double tap 'bink bink' sounds it could make. Had Almond sung it through a vocoder a la Kraftwerk, then the whole thing would have fallen flat on its arse. But he doesn't.

Whereas Jones sounded glad to see the back of her lover, Almond is less sure and the sheer ordinariness of his voice and his straining to hit or maintain the majority of the notes introduces a confused pathos that everyman could relate to (a trick he'd mine to much greater effect on 'Say Hello, Wave Goodbye'). The fact that nobody was sure whether he was singing to a man or a woman, or exactly what this love was tainted with, added an edge of sleaze and danger that the band thrived on and milked for all it was worth:

"This tainted love you've given
I give you all a boy could give you"

Almond, just by being Almond, neatly subverts the rampant kiss off heterosexuality of the original to climb tightly inside the song and dance around in it as if it were his own skin, which is what a good cover version should do. And this is a good cover version; as instantly recognisable as 'Smoke On The Water' within two seconds of hearing the skittering keyboard introduction, it has buried the original in its re-interpretation as completely as Aretha's version of 'Respect' buried Redding's.