I’m here to speak about a cover of a cover of a cover: “Tainted Love”. The song was originally released in 1965 by American singer Gloria Jones, but it failed to achieve mainstream success (or even hit the charts despite a re-release in 1976) until English duo Soft Cell re-recorded their new wave dance cover in 1981. They’re certainly not the first band to achieve massive success off the strength of a cover, whether or not it was their first hit (Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”, The Byrds’ “Turn, Turn, Turn”, Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog”, etc.), and they certainly won’t be the last (Marilyn Manson’s “Sweet Dreams of This”, Whitney Huston’s “I Will Always Love You”, Johnny Cash’s “Hurt”, etc.). Covers aren’t going away; they’re a mainstay in the music industry.
You might think I’m here to talk about Marilyn Manson’s 2001 cover of “Tainted Love” (a brief respite in a trite performer’s decline into mediocrity) – nope. I’ve instead brushed the dust off some ancient CDs and dug out my copy of Coil’s 1985 cover of the Jones-cum-Almond/Ball smash hit.
While far more reminiscent of the Soft Cell version than the Jones original, Coil’s lament is simply unnerving as it twists the dance-pop hit into a gothic-post-industrial dirge.
Released in 1985 on the Panic/Tainted Love single, it became pretty popular at goth nights on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the late ’80s and early ’90s, despite no Coil releases ever achieving any sort of mainstream success. While considered pioneers of the industrial and post-industrial genres and praised for their innovation, Coil only ever reached limited audiences dressed all in black. Even then, most fans from the goth scene are only ever usually aware of this cover and “Love’s Secret Domain”, a song for which they poached lyrics from Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” and lines from William Blake’s “The Sick Rose”. They might have achieved some moderate success in the mid-80s when a then-young Clive Barker approached them to create the soundtrack for his upcoming film, Hellraiser, but New Line Cinema found their sound to be far too strange for what was to be a mainstream film.* So Coil was left to stay on the fringes.
Coil’s cover of “Tainted Love” is my all-time favourite version, however – it’s absolutely haunting. With no pretence of over-production and a simple set of sounds from what I’m sure are just an analog synthesizer and some bell samples, the cover has a rawness that reminds me of Peter Christopherson’s earlier work for the seminal industrial band Throbbing Gristle (but with slightly more melody). John Balance’s vocals raise hairs on the back of one’s neck, and they’re a far cry from the more commercially acceptable Marc Almond.
Almond, it should be noted, ended up loving this version. He appeared in Coil’s video for the song and as a guest musician on Coil’s Horse Rotorvator and Love’s Secret Domain. While they come from the same country, Soft Cell and Coil couldn’t be more different – one is dance-pop at its zenith, and the other, at times, can barely be described as music.
Innovation’s a bitch, I guess.
* What is mainstream about a film surrounding multiple murders; a box that brings one to a sado-masochistic hell dimension; and a cabal of demons with flayed and barbed flesh, bondage gear, and oozing blood is beyond me
Filed under: General, Ogmios/David Ward, Tainted Love Tagged: biff bam pop, Clive Barker, Coil, David Ward, Gloria Jones, Hellraiser, industrial music, Soft Cell, Tainted Love, Throbbing Gristle
