Soft Cell to finally deliver ’80s anthem Tainted Love to fans Down Under
It’s a pop hit for the ages and soon you will get to hear Soft Cell perform Tainted Love live during their first-ever tour of Australia in April.
It’s hard to fathom that it’s been four-and-half decades since Soft Cell released their seminal single Tainted Love.
The song resonated around the world on release and it’s a tune that still dominates playlists today. Stranger still, in all the years that have passed since the single’s release in 1981, Soft Cell have never toured Australia. Until now.
“So 46 years later, I’m finally getting to Australia,” Soft Cell’s Marc Almond (David Ball is the other half of the duo) tells me on the line from Portugal. “I’m very, very excited about it. I’m excited to finally get to see Australian fans, to see some of Australia and to get to play some music there.”
Mind you, he won’t have long. It’s a bit of a whirlwind tour beginning in Perth and also playing Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane between April 10 and 17.
Tainted Love wasn’t the duo’s only hit. In the UK alone the pioneers of British synth-pop music had 12 Top 40 hits, including Torch, What and Bedsitter. They also released four Top 20 albums between 1981 and 1984.
Almond, the duo’s singer, launched a successful solo career in 1984 and has recorded with everyone from the late Gene Pitney to Russian orchestras. A significant figure in the LGBTQ+ community, Almond’s work in Soft Cell alongside David Ball has inspired everyone from Erasure to the Pet Shop Boys.
You might like
On the tour, Soft Cell will perform their debut album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret in its entirety, along with their greatest hits. As a special treat, doubling as the support act will be Almond himself.
“I’ll come on first as a solo act,” he explains. “We’re doing the show in two halves. I don’t know what I’ve let myself in for. I’ve never done it before. I’ve had a longer career as a solo artist than I have with Soft Cell, so I thought it would be a shame if, on my one time going to Australia … not to do a selection of solo songs as well. I’m getting a little bit old now, so I decided to bring my full band over for the first half and the second half will be Soft Cell.”
When Soft Cell started life at Leeds Polytechnic in 1978, a future as pop stars seemed a remote possibility. By 1980 they had had no commercial success, but that changed when Ball and Almond decided to add a cover to their setlist.
“It was Dave, actually, who had Gloria Jones’ original single of Tainted Love,” explains Almond. “We were an electronic duo in the North of England. There was a whole electronic music scene going on at that time, post-punk late ’70s, and we grew up as part of that. We met at the Leeds Art College. We were part of the electronic underground. It was all about making music that was very cold and robotic, very futuristic and very European.
‘It took on a life of its own and even now, 46 years later, Tainted Love is everywhere’
Subscribe for updates
“So we thought, let’s break the mold of that. Let’s bring soul into it. And it was really an experiment. Dave played me a whole bunch of records, because he was a 1960s soul aficionado, and he played Tainted Love. I knew Gloria Jones because I was a big Marc Bolan and T Rex fan. Gloria, of course, was married to Marc. She was his backing singer.
“I thought, this song is great. And the title struck me. I thought, what a fantastic title. Let’s do this. So we put it into our set, and it just took off from there.
“What happened with that single was just the most incredible thing. It took on a life of its own and even now, 46 years later, Tainted Love is everywhere. I get into taxi cabs and it’s playing on the radio. I turn on movies and it’s on the soundtrack. It’s on TV adverts. It’s a two-and-a-half minute song that has had this amazing life of its own.
“And then, of course, Rihanna sampling it years later on S.O.S.! I love her for that. It’s fantastic, brilliant. I mean, thank God for that. It was great and we got some wonderful royalties too.”
Almond, 67, had been a pop fan since the day he was born. His parents were always playing music around the house and he’s profoundly grateful for the life music has allowed him.
“It’s been an amazing journey that started with me listening to pirate radio on the black plastic transistor radio my mum bought me,” he recalls.
“It wasn’t until I met Dave (Ball) at college that I really felt that I could do something serious with music and take it on as a career. Before that I thought I might go into experimental theatre or do something involved with art.
“But I met Dave and being a music lover he just brought all these kinds of tunes and ideas to me. I thought, yes, this is what I want to do, I can make something of this, I can make a life and a career out of this.
“I never expected we would go on to have this kind of success. I thought we’d be a cute little underground indie band or something. It went wild. Forty-six years and 30-odd albums later I’m still making music and still working with great producers and great musicians.”