Few sounds are as instantly recognizable as the jarring introduction to Soft Cell’s rendition of the Gloria Jones hit, “Tainted Love.” That catchy, electronic ba-dun-dun, slicing through the synth-riddled new wave bop, has been forever burned into listeners’ brains. It would be the only U.S. chart-topper for the English synth-pop duo, but these so-called “one-hit wonders” found success beyond 1981.
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Where is Soft Cell now, you ask? Well, let’s find out.
Soft Cell Then
Soft Cell—made up of Marc Almond and David Ball—formed in 1978 after meeting at art school in Leeds, England. They sparingly released their 1980 EP, Mutant Moments, to little success and dropped a handful of singles that failed to chart.
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They eventually saw their breakthrough with their official debut, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, released in 1981. It featured their explosive “Tainted Love,” which became an international success, spending 43 straight weeks on the US Billboard Hot 100, a record-breaking run at the time. However, the entire album harbored a number of gems that were overshadowed by the rise of “Tainted Love.”
“We did ‘Tainted Love’ in a day,” Almond shared in a 2021 interview for the album’s 40th anniversary. “The vocal is the first or second take and I played the Syndrum sounds that became hooks. When it started to move into and up the charts it was a bit of a shock. Thrilling too, but life felt like it was never going to be the same.”
Soft Cell rode the wave of success from “Tainted Love” for the better part of a year. While several more hits followed, they only gained traction in their UK home. The duo began to near their end shortly after their explosive success, and by 1983, they had started to fizzle out, forming their own side projects and doing their own things.
In a short time together, they released three studio albums, the final one being This Last Night in Sodom, which was released in early 1984.
“By Last Night In Sodom (1984) we’d just had enough,” Ball said in the interview. “We were always falling out with the record company … we didn’t really have proper management. It was time for a break, so we said, ‘Let’s call it a day for a few years.’ It ended up being a very long day!”
Soft Cell Now
After Soft Cell, Almond went on the pursue a fairly successful solo career with Ball working as a producer and forming a handful of short-lived bands here and there.
The pair reunited with the turn of the new millennium, coming together for a handful of live performances and to release Cruelty Without Beauty in 2002. What followed would be two more decades of Soft Cell, years of them sporadically releasing archived music, long-awaited demo recordings, and various remixes.
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Soft Cell’s latest album, Happiness Not Included, was released in May of 2022 and saw a healthy chart performance across the United Kingdom and Europe. What the future holds for the duo has yet to be revealed, but where they now seems pretty alright.
Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns
