Tainted Love

Gloria Jones recorded two versions of "Tainted Love": in 1964 (as a B-side of her single "My Bad Boy's Comin' Home") and in 1976 (released on her album "Vixen"). Both versions failed to chart in the UK and USA. Marc Almond of Soft Cell called this song "a mixture of cold electronics with an over-passionate, over-exuberant, slightly out of key vocal" according to the book "1000 UK #1 Hits" by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh. Almond recalled, "Dave introduced me to the record and I loved it so much and we wanted an interesting song for a encore number in our show. Dave loved northern soul and it was a novelty to have an electronic synthesizer band doing a soul song." Ed Cobb, who wrote this song, told Blender magazine, "I had a lover for whom you could say wasn't a good individual. I tried to go into her head and write a song from her standpoint. Once the word 'tainted' had popped into my head, the song was written very quickly, probably 15 minutes." "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell was number-one hit on the Singles Chart and the best-selling single of 1981 in the UK. In the USA, the song spent 43 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100.