![]() Around this time came non-album single Torch, notable for not only being a haunting torch song given an 80s twist and a melancholy burst of sax, but also for the backing vocals provided by the band’s American dealer and sometime muse Cindy Ecstasy. And that scene, in the early 1980s, was buoyed by the latest new drug of choice for a small and select group of scenesters: MDMA, or ecstasy. TorchĬourtesy of their freshly minted fame, Almond and Ball had a pass into the world of downtown New York clubbing, which mirrored the band’s tales of nightlife gone awry and dark secrets. It reached No 3 in the UK charts in 1982 and remains, for many Soft Cell fans, Almond and Ball’s finest moment. Was there a better, more evocative opening to a song in the 1980s than “Standing at the door of the Pink Flamingo / Crying in the rain”? Almond’s delivery was operatic in its drama, his barbed put-downs (“I’ll find someone / Who’s not going cheap in the sales”) and aching melancholy blending wonderfully into a sorry tale of a “kind of so-so love” that was never meant to be. Soft Cell’s imperial phase arrived early, the treasure-trove first album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret yielding up most of their best work. Nothing, though, could detract from the triumphant ascendancy of the duo, fuelled by this quirky, particular, defiant piece of brilliance. The irony was that, being a cover version, the band’s best-known, bestselling track made them far less money than might be expected. It even cracked the US, climbing to a creditable eighth in the US Top 40 the following year. ![]() Endlessly danceable, punctuated by a trademark synth riff – the double beep subsequently sampled in 2006 on Rihanna’s SOS – Tainted Love became a phenomenon, lodging itself at the top of the UK charts, selling more than any other single in 1981 and to date racking up nearly 1.3m sales. ![]() Produced by a sceptical Mike Thorne, the Soft Cell version was perceptibly slowed down, Almond’s distinctive vocal – mordant, expressive, a shade flat – relishing each lyric, queering the story of an affair gone awry in a manner that was still relatively risque. It was also Soft Cell’s make-or-break moment, after Memorabilia failed to chart. ![]() Although now a world-beater, a cover version that wholly eclipses the original – which was sung by Gloria Jones, appropriately, given that she was the former partner of Almond’s teen hero Marc Bolan – Tainted Love was, at the time, an offbeat choice for a single. ![]()
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