How does a British duo take a fun but pedestrian 60s song and turn it into an iconic synth-pop classic? Well, I don’t know, you’d have to ask Soft Cell how they did it. But the fact of the matter is that it was done!
In it’s original form, “Tainted Love” is a pleasant upbeat soul number which bears an uncanny resemblance to Fine Young Cannibals’ “Good Thing”, which arrived a quarter-century later. In it’s more popular, remade version, it’s synthed out and camped out, and Soft Cell were smart enough to add a chunk of The Supremes’ 1964 hit “Where Did Our Love Go” as the coda. Genius stuff.
“Tainted Love” has held up remarkably well for a song that barely scraped the inside of the Top 10 upon its’ release in 1982. Rihanna adapted it perfectly into her hit “S.O.S.” you can’t shake a stick at an 80s station without hearing it once an hour or so, and it’s also lived on as a karaoke staple.
I’d actually never seen the video for “Tainted Love” until I prepared this post. Wow, this video is gayer than a sack of pink triangles!
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The story of Jack & Diane, two American kids growing up in the heartland, resonated with more than just the folks in the middle of the country. If it didn’t, there’s no way it would’ve become as huge as it did. Nearly thirty years later, it remains John Mellencamp’s magnum opus.
As a blond bombshell and a culture vulture (I say that in the nicest way possible), Deborah Harry directly set the tone for artists like Madonna and Gwen Stefani, who borrowed (and still borrow) from every subculture possible and transformed them into their own unique stew. Blondie, the band Harry fronted, was a new-wave band at heart, but the band’s hits ranged from four-on-the-floor disco (“Heart of Glass”) to reggae (“The Tide is High”). With 1980’s “Rapture”, however, Blondie became the first mainstream band to dip a pinky-toe in the burgeoning hip-hop phenomenon. With a shout out to a then-unknown party promoter named Fab Five Freddie and some endearingly clunky rhyming by Harry, “Rapture” bridged the gap between the downtown new wavers and the utpown B-girls and B-boys to become the very definition of a successful crossover. Nearly thirty years later, few songs have merged genres so respectfully and effectively.