"Tainted Love" by Soft Cell

Birthday wishes go out today to David Ball, a man with the perennial bad luck to be best known as 'the other bloke out of Soft Cell'...  Ball and bandmate Marc Almond first met at Leeds Polytechnic, and in 1979 formed their pioneering synthpop duo.  Despite a string of Top Forty hits in the UK, they are best known worldwide for Tainted Love, which was the second single off their 1981 album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret*.

Soft Cell weren't the first to record the song** - that honour belongs to Gloria Jones, who did it in 1964; nor would they be the last, as Marilyn Manson would put his own unique spin on it in 2001 for inclusion on the soundtrack to Not Another Teen Movie.  And then, of course, there's Rihanna - whose producer J. R. Rotem extensively sampled it for her 2006 single SOS, from her second studio album A Girl like Me.

Ball has also been a member of The Grid, produced for The Virgin Prunes, done remixes for The Pet Shop Boys and David Bowie, and recorded music for film; he and Almond even reunited Soft Cell, in 2001.

*Given the massive success of Tainted Love it's more than a little strange that the album's first single, Memorabilia, did not even chart.
**Which was written by Ed Cobb, formerly of The Four Preps.
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