WEBVTT
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Kalaroga Shark Media.
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I'm Garrett Fisher and this is the Hit Maker Chronicles.
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Last week we kicked off our countdown of the top
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ten best cover songs of all time with Gary Jules's
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Mad World at number ten. This week we're moving to
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number nine, and I want to tell you about a
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cover that's so ingrained in eighties culture that most people
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have no idea to cover at all. Tainted Love by
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Soft Cell. If you grew up in the eighties, you
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know this song, that iconic synth rift, Mark Alman's dramatic,
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almost pained vocal delivery, the song that defined synthpop and
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turned two art school kids from Leeds into international stars.
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But here's what you probably don't know. Tainted Love was
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originally recorded in nineteen sixty four by an American soul
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singer named Gloria Jones, and when she released it, almost
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nobody heard it. This is the story of how a
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forgotten northern soul record became one of the best selling
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singles of all time in the UK, and how Mark
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Alman and Dave Ball transformed a straightforward soul song into
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something darker, weirder, and infinitely more memorable. Gloria Jones was
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born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in nineteen forty five. By the
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early nineteen sixties, she was part of the Los Angeles
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soul scene, working as a session singer and trying to
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break through as a solo artist. In nineteen sixty four,
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she recorded Tainted Love for the Champion label, a small
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independent outfit that was trying to compete with Motown and Stacks,
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but never quite had the resources or the hits to
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make it happen. The song was written by Ed Cobb,
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a songwriter and producer who'd written hits like Dirty Water
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for the Standels. Tainted Love was a classic mid sixties
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soul number, up tempo, driven by horns in a solid
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rhythm section, with Gloria's powerful voice singing about a relationship
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that's gone wrong, about love that's been poisoned, corrupted, turned
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into something painful. It's a great song. Gloria's performance is excellent,
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the production is tight. Everything about it should have made
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it a hit.
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It wasn't.
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The single flopped, nobody bought it. Champion Records didn't have
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the distribution or the promotional muscle to get it on
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the radio. Gloria Jones continued working. She'd later become famous
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for her relationship with Mark Bolan of t Rex, and
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she was driving the car when he died in nineteen
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seventy seven. But Tainted Love disappeared, except it didn't completely disappear,
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because in the late sixties and early seventies something interesting
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was happening in Northern England. The Northern soul scene was
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a subculture built around rare American soul and R and
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B records from the sixties. DJs and clubs across Northland, Manchester, Wigan,
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Blackpool were digging through bins of obscure American imports looking
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for uptempo soul tracks that hadn't been hits, but had
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the right energy, the right beat, the right feeling for
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all night dancing. These weren't mainstream clubs playing motown hits.
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Everyone knew. These were clubs playing records most people had
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never heard. The rarer the record, the more credibility it had,
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and Gloria Jones's Tainted Love became one of those records.
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It was a Northern soul anthem. DJ's played it, dancers
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loved it, but it was still obscure. You couldn't walk
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into a record store and buy it. You had to
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know someone who had an import copy, or you had
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to track down the original Champion forty five, which was
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increasingly hard to find. And that's where it might have
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stayed a cult favorite in northern soul clubs, unknown to
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the wider world if not for a skinny art school
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kid from Southport named Mark Allman. Mark Allman and Dave
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Ball met at Leeds Polytechnic in the late nineteen seventies.
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Mark was studying performance art, Dave was into electronic music.
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They started making music together under the name soft Cell,
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a reference to the fact that their music was softer,
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more pop oriented than the industrial noise that was dominating
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the British experimental scene at the time. But they weren't
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making mainstream pop. They were making dark, sexually ambiguous synthpop
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that drew from glamrock, disco and the seedier side of nightlife.
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Mark's lyrics were about hustlers, drugs, cheap thrills and emotional damage.
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Dave's synthesizers created soundscapes that felt cold and artificial but
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somehow deeply emotional. They were weird, they were outsiders, and
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they were completely broke. In early nineteen eighty one, Soft
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Cell signed with some Bizzer Records, a small independent label
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that was championing the new wave British SYNTHACX. Their first single, Memorabilia,
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got some attention in the underground, but didn't chart. The
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label needed a hit. Mark and Dave needed money, and
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they needed it fast. That's when NonStop Productions, a production
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company working with Soft Cell, suggested they record a cover,
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something that had a proven melody a recognizable hook, but
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that they could make their own. They suggested Tainted Love.
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Mark Alman knew the song, he'd heard it in Northern
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soul clubs. He loved Gloria Jones's version, but he also
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knew that if Soft Cell was going to cover it,
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they couldn't just recreate the soul arrangement. They had to
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transform it, make it unrecognizable, make it theirs. Dave Ball
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stripped the song down to its most basic elements, the
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melody and the lyrics. Then he rebuilt it entirely on synthesizers,
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no horns, no live drums, no bass guitar, just since
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the cold, mechanical, relentless pulse that sounded nothing like the warm,
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organic soul of the original, and Mark sang it differently.
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Gloria Jones had sung Tainted Love with power and confidence,
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like someone who was angry about being hurt but still
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in control. Mark sang it with desperation, with vulnerability, with
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a kind of wounded theatricality that made it feel less
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like a breakup song and more like a confession from
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someone who's been damaged by love and doesn't know how
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to escape it. The Soft Cell version of Tainted Love
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was recorded in one day. They didn't have the budget
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for anything more. Dave programmed the sinse Mark sang, they
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mixed it, and they turned in a version that was
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so radically different from the original that it barely seemed
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like the same song. Some Bizarre Records released it in
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July nineteen eighty one. It entered the UK Singles Chart
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at number seventy seven. Then it jumped to forty three,
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then twenty six, then twelve, and on August twenty ninth,
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nineteen eighty one, Tainted Love by Soft Cell hit number
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one on the UK Singles Chart.
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It stayed in the top.
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Forty for forty three weeks. Forty three weeks, that's almost
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a full year. It became one of the best selling
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singles of all time in the UK, eventually selling over
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one point four million.
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Copies in Britain alone.
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In the United States, it peaked at number eight on
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the Billboard Hot one hundred and nineteen eighty two. It
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became a massive hitting clubs, a staple of MTV, and
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one of the defining songs of the early eighties new
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wave movement. Soft Cell had transformed a northern soul obscurity
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into a global phenomenon. And here's the remarkable thing. Gloria
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Jones's version didn't benefit from the success. Most people who
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bought Soft Cell's Tainted Love had no idea they were
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listening to a cover. The original remained obscure. Gloria Jones
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didn't get a resurgence. She didn't suddenly aren't charting. The
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song had become entirely soft Cells. That's both the power
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and the complication of a truly transformative cover. Soft Cell
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didn't steal the song. They paid for the rights, Gloria
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Jones and Ed Cobb received royalties, but they did replace
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it in the cultural consciousness. The original became a footnote,
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a piece of trivia. Did you know Tainted Love is
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actually a cover?
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We'll be right back.
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So what makes soft Cells versions so much more successful?
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Than Gloria Jones's original. Why did this cover become iconic
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while the original remained obscure. Part of it is timing.
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In nineteen sixty four, Gloria's version was competing with Motown, Stacks,
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Atlantic Records, all these major labels with massive rosters of
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soul artists. Champion Records couldn't get it on the radio,
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couldn't get it distributed widely. The song was lost in
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the noise. In nineteen eighty one, Soft Cell was riding
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a wave. MTV had just launched. Synthpop was exploding, The
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Human League, Depeche Mode, Duran, Duran, all these British acts
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were using synthesizers to create this new sound that felt
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futuristic and accessible at the same time. Tainted Love fit
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perfectly into that moment. But it's more than just timing.
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It's the arrangement. Dave Ball's synth line is one of
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the most recognizable riffs in pop music. That bouncing, stuttering bassline,
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the cold mechanical.
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Precision of it.
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It sounds like a machine trying to express human emotion,
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and that disconnect creates tension that makes the song impossible
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to ignore. And then there's Mark Allman's vocal. He's not
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trying to sing like Gloria Jones. He's not trying to
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match her power or her soul credentials. He's singing it
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like someone who's been beaten down by love, who's exhausted,
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who's begging to be released from something toxic. That vulnerability
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made the song resonate differently. Gloria's version is about being
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hurt by love and walking away with dignity. Mark's version
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is about being hurt by love and not being able
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to leave even though you know you should. That's a
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different emotional story, and in nineteen eighty one, that story
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connected with millions of people who felt trapped in relationships romantic, professional,
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familial that were slowly poisoning them. The song also worked
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because Soft Cell extended it with a medley on the
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twelve inch single and in many of their live performances.
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Tainted Love transitions directly into a cover of The Supremes
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Where Did Our Love Go? That combination Tainted Love bleeding
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into another song about lost love created this extended meditation
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on relationships falling apart that felt epic in a way
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the standalone song didn't. MTV played the video constantly mark
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almond and heavy eyeliner, moving with that.
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Strange, androgynous energy.
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The cheap, stark visuals that looked like they were shot
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for nothing because they were, but somehow felt perfect for
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the song's cold, synthetic sound. The song became unavoidable, and
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because it was everywhere, it defined what synthpop could be,
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not just catchy melodies and electronic production, but emotional depth, darkness,
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a willingness to explore the ugly side of relationships while
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still making something you could dance to. Soft Cell never
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topped Tainted Love. They had other hits Bedsitter, Say Hello Wave,
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Goodbye Torch, but nothing came close to the success of
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their breakthrough single. The song became bigger than the band.
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They broke up in nineteen eighty four, reunited for tours,
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broke up again, but Tainted Love remained, and Gloria Jones
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in interviews over the years, she's been gracious about the cover.
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She's acknowledged that Soft Cell made the song famous in
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a way her version never was. She's collected royalties from it.
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Ed Cobb's estate, and Gloria have made more money from
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the Soft Cell cover than the original ever could have earned.
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But there's also a melancholy to it. Her version is
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objectively great. It deserved to be a hit, and if
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Champion Records had been motown, if the timing had been different,
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if any number of small factors had broken her way,
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maybe it would have been Instead. She recorded a perfect
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soul song that nobody heard until someone else transformed it
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into something completely different seventeen years later. That's the strange
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justice of cover songs. Sometimes the best version of a
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song isn't the original. Sometimes it takes someone else in
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a different era, with a different perspective and different tools
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to unlock what the song can be. Soft Cell's Tainted
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Love has been covered dozens of times since nineteen eighty one.
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Marilyn Manson did an industrial rock version. In two thousand
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and one, Rihanna sampled it. The song has been used
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in commercials, films, TV shows. It's been streamed hundreds of
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millions of times, and every time someone discovers it, there's
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a small chance they'll dig deeper and find Gloria Jones's original.
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They'll hear the straightforward soul arrangement, the powerful vocals, the
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song as it was first imagined, and they'll understand that
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Both versions are great, but they're great in completely different ways.
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That's why Tainted Love by Soft Cell is number nine
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on our countdown. Because it took a forgotten soul record
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and transformed it into a synth pop classic. Because it
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proved that a cover doesn't have to sound anything like
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the original to honor it, because it became so successful
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that it erased the original from popular memory while still
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paying tribute to it. And because sometimes the best way
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to cover a song is to imagine it as if
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it's being performed by a completely different person in a
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completely different era, with completely different tools, trying to express
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a completely different emotion. Gloria Jones sang Tainted Love like
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someone who'd been hurt but would survive. Mark Allman sang
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it like someone who'd been hurt and didn't know how
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to stop hurting. Same song, different worlds, both essential. This
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is Garrett Fisher and This is the Hit Maker Chronicles
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join us next Sunday for number eight on our countdown
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of the top ten best cover songs of all time.