The Greatest Cover Songs of All-time: 9. Soft Cell - "Tainted lLove"

0:03 Kalaroga Shark Media. I'm Garrett Fisher and this is the Hit Maker Chronicles. Last week we kicked off our countdown of the top ten best cover songs of all time with Gary Jules's Mad World at number ten. This week we're moving to number nine, and I want to tell you about a cover that's so ingrained in eighties culture that most people have no idea to cover at all. Tainted Love by Soft Cell. If you grew up in the eighties, you know this song, that iconic synth rift, Mark Alman's dramatic, almost pained vocal delivery, the song that defined synthpop and turned two art school kids from Leeds into international stars.

0:51 But here's what you probably don't know. Tainted Love was originally recorded in nineteen sixty four by an American soul singer named Gloria Jones, and when she released it, almost nobody heard it. This is the story of how a forgotten northern soul record became one of the best selling singles of all time in the UK, and how Mark Alman and Dave Ball transformed a straightforward soul song into something darker, weirder, and infinitely more memorable. Gloria Jones was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in nineteen forty five. By the early nineteen sixties, she was part of the Los Angeles soul scene, working as a session singer and trying to break through as a solo artist. In nineteen sixty four, she recorded Tainted Love for the Champion label, a small independent outfit that was trying to compete with Motown and Stacks, but never quite had the resources or the hits to make it happen. The song was written by Ed Cobb, a songwriter and producer who'd written hits like Dirty Water for the Standels. Tainted Love was a classic mid sixties soul number, up tempo, driven by horns in a solid rhythm section, with Gloria's powerful voice singing about a relationship that's gone wrong, about love that's been poisoned, corrupted, turned into something painful. It's a great song. Gloria's performance is excellent, the production is tight. Everything about it should have made it a hit.

2:17 It wasn't. The single flopped, nobody bought it. Champion Records didn't have the distribution or the promotional muscle to get it on the radio. Gloria Jones continued working. She'd later become famous for her relationship with Mark Bolan of t Rex, and she was driving the car when he died in nineteen seventy seven. But Tainted Love disappeared, except it didn't completely disappear, because in the late sixties and early seventies something interesting was happening in Northern England. The Northern soul scene was a subculture built around rare American soul and R and B records from the sixties. DJs and clubs across Northland, Manchester, Wigan, Blackpool were digging through bins of obscure American imports looking for uptempo soul tracks that hadn't been hits, but had the right energy, the right beat, the right feeling for all night dancing. These weren't mainstream clubs playing motown hits.

3:17 Everyone knew. These were clubs playing records most people had never heard. The rarer the record, the more credibility it had, and Gloria Jones's Tainted Love became one of those records. It was a Northern soul anthem. DJ's played it, dancers loved it, but it was still obscure. You couldn't walk into a record store and buy it. You had to know someone who had an import copy, or you had to track down the original Champion forty five, which was increasingly hard to find. And that's where it might have stayed a cult favorite in northern soul clubs, unknown to the wider world if not for a skinny art school kid from Southport named Mark Allman. Mark Allman and Dave Ball met at Leeds Polytechnic in the late nineteen seventies.

4:06 Mark was studying performance art, Dave was into electronic music. They started making music together under the name soft Cell, a reference to the fact that their music was softer, more pop oriented than the industrial noise that was dominating the British experimental scene at the time. But they weren't making mainstream pop. They were making dark, sexually ambiguous synthpop that drew from glamrock, disco and the seedier side of nightlife. Mark's lyrics were about hustlers, drugs, cheap thrills and emotional damage. Dave's synthesizers created soundscapes that felt cold and artificial but somehow deeply emotional. They were weird, they were outsiders, and they were completely broke. In early nineteen eighty one, Soft Cell signed with some Bizzer Records, a small independent label that was championing the new wave British SYNTHACX. Their first single, Memorabilia, got some attention in the underground, but didn't chart. The label needed a hit. Mark and Dave needed money, and they needed it fast. That's when NonStop Productions, a production company working with Soft Cell, suggested they record a cover, something that had a proven melody a recognizable hook, but that they could make their own. They suggested Tainted Love.

5:29 Mark Alman knew the song, he'd heard it in Northern soul clubs. He loved Gloria Jones's version, but he also knew that if Soft Cell was going to cover it, they couldn't just recreate the soul arrangement. They had to transform it, make it unrecognizable, make it theirs. Dave Ball stripped the song down to its most basic elements, the melody and the lyrics. Then he rebuilt it entirely on synthesizers, no horns, no live drums, no bass guitar, just since the cold, mechanical, relentless pulse that sounded nothing like the warm, organic soul of the original, and Mark sang it differently. Gloria Jones had sung Tainted Love with power and confidence, like someone who was angry about being hurt but still in control. Mark sang it with desperation, with vulnerability, with a kind of wounded theatricality that made it feel less like a breakup song and more like a confession from someone who's been damaged by love and doesn't know how to escape it. The Soft Cell version of Tainted Love was recorded in one day. They didn't have the budget for anything more. Dave programmed the sinse Mark sang, they mixed it, and they turned in a version that was so radically different from the original that it barely seemed like the same song. Some Bizarre Records released it in July nineteen eighty one. It entered the UK Singles Chart at number seventy seven. Then it jumped to forty three,

6:59 then twenty six, then twelve, and on August twenty ninth, nineteen eighty one, Tainted Love by Soft Cell hit number one on the UK Singles Chart. It stayed in the top. Forty for forty three weeks. Forty three weeks, that's almost a full year. It became one of the best selling singles of all time in the UK, eventually selling over one point four million. Copies in Britain alone. In the United States, it peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot one hundred and nineteen eighty two. It became a massive hitting clubs, a staple of MTV, and one of the defining songs of the early eighties new wave movement. Soft Cell had transformed a northern soul obscurity into a global phenomenon. And here's the remarkable thing. Gloria Jones's version didn't benefit from the success. Most people who bought Soft Cell's Tainted Love had no idea they were listening to a cover. The original remained obscure. Gloria Jones didn't get a resurgence. She didn't suddenly aren't charting. The song had become entirely soft Cells. That's both the power and the complication of a truly transformative cover. Soft Cell didn't steal the song. They paid for the rights, Gloria Jones and Ed Cobb received royalties, but they did replace it in the cultural consciousness. The original became a footnote, a piece of trivia. Did you know Tainted Love is actually a cover?

8:28 We'll be right back. So what makes soft Cells versions so much more successful? Than Gloria Jones's original. Why did this cover become iconic while the original remained obscure. Part of it is timing. In nineteen sixty four, Gloria's version was competing with Motown, Stacks, Atlantic Records, all these major labels with massive rosters of soul artists. Champion Records couldn't get it on the radio, couldn't get it distributed widely. The song was lost in the noise. In nineteen eighty one, Soft Cell was riding a wave. MTV had just launched. Synthpop was exploding, The Human League, Depeche Mode, Duran, Duran, all these British acts were using synthesizers to create this new sound that felt futuristic and accessible at the same time. Tainted Love fit perfectly into that moment. But it's more than just timing.

9:34 It's the arrangement. Dave Ball's synth line is one of the most recognizable riffs in pop music. That bouncing, stuttering bassline, the cold mechanical. Precision of it. It sounds like a machine trying to express human emotion, and that disconnect creates tension that makes the song impossible to ignore. And then there's Mark Allman's vocal. He's not trying to sing like Gloria Jones. He's not trying to match her power or her soul credentials. He's singing it like someone who's been beaten down by love, who's exhausted, who's begging to be released from something toxic. That vulnerability made the song resonate differently. Gloria's version is about being hurt by love and walking away with dignity. Mark's version is about being hurt by love and not being able to leave even though you know you should. That's a different emotional story, and in nineteen eighty one, that story connected with millions of people who felt trapped in relationships romantic, professional, familial that were slowly poisoning them. The song also worked because Soft Cell extended it with a medley on the twelve inch single and in many of their live performances.

10:46 Tainted Love transitions directly into a cover of The Supremes Where Did Our Love Go? That combination Tainted Love bleeding into another song about lost love created this extended meditation on relationships falling apart that felt epic in a way the standalone song didn't. MTV played the video constantly mark almond and heavy eyeliner, moving with that. Strange, androgynous energy. The cheap, stark visuals that looked like they were shot for nothing because they were, but somehow felt perfect for the song's cold, synthetic sound. The song became unavoidable, and because it was everywhere, it defined what synthpop could be, not just catchy melodies and electronic production, but emotional depth, darkness, a willingness to explore the ugly side of relationships while still making something you could dance to. Soft Cell never topped Tainted Love. They had other hits Bedsitter, Say Hello Wave, Goodbye Torch, but nothing came close to the success of their breakthrough single. The song became bigger than the band.

11:59 They broke up in nineteen eighty four, reunited for tours, broke up again, but Tainted Love remained, and Gloria Jones in interviews over the years, she's been gracious about the cover. She's acknowledged that Soft Cell made the song famous in a way her version never was. She's collected royalties from it. Ed Cobb's estate, and Gloria have made more money from the Soft Cell cover than the original ever could have earned. But there's also a melancholy to it. Her version is objectively great. It deserved to be a hit, and if Champion Records had been motown, if the timing had been different, if any number of small factors had broken her way, maybe it would have been Instead. She recorded a perfect soul song that nobody heard until someone else transformed it into something completely different seventeen years later. That's the strange justice of cover songs. Sometimes the best version of a song isn't the original. Sometimes it takes someone else in a different era, with a different perspective and different tools to unlock what the song can be. Soft Cell's Tainted Love has been covered dozens of times since nineteen eighty one.

13:09 Marilyn Manson did an industrial rock version. In two thousand and one, Rihanna sampled it. The song has been used in commercials, films, TV shows. It's been streamed hundreds of millions of times, and every time someone discovers it, there's a small chance they'll dig deeper and find Gloria Jones's original. They'll hear the straightforward soul arrangement, the powerful vocals, the song as it was first imagined, and they'll understand that Both versions are great, but they're great in completely different ways. That's why Tainted Love by Soft Cell is number nine on our countdown. Because it took a forgotten soul record and transformed it into a synth pop classic. Because it proved that a cover doesn't have to sound anything like the original to honor it, because it became so successful that it erased the original from popular memory while still paying tribute to it. And because sometimes the best way to cover a song is to imagine it as if it's being performed by a completely different person in a completely different era, with completely different tools, trying to express a completely different emotion. Gloria Jones sang Tainted Love like someone who'd been hurt but would survive. Mark Allman sang it like someone who'd been hurt and didn't know how to stop hurting. Same song, different worlds, both essential. This is Garrett Fisher and This is the Hit Maker Chronicles join us next Sunday for number eight on our countdown of the top ten best cover songs of all time.