Electronic Sound Magazine Issue 86 Back Issue

When Soft Cell appeared on ‘Top Of The Pops’ for the first time in 1981, Marc Almond stole the show. He wasn’t a flamboyant character like Boy George, but seeing him on our TV screens that night, with ‘Tainted Love’ on its way to being a Number One record, somehow made it possible to be alternative without going full tilt. Dressed head to toe in black, with his eyeliner and bangles and mop of hair, he changed countless thousands of lives. Suddenly, almost miraculously, it was OK just to be you – whatever flavour you were.

Soft Cell have always been in a league of their own. It started as “a weird idea”, as Dave Ball puts it. “We were very anti the shoegazing bands in Leeds being all serious, trying to be political,” he adds. “So I said, ‘Let’s do a northern soul record, but with synthesisers. That’ll fuck them up’.” And that’s exactly what they did. Their take on ‘Tainted Love’, a firm favourite at the Wigan Casino, really hit a nerve and getting it to the top of the charts was a huge deal. In the early 1980s, it meant you were shifting records by the truckload. It meant everyone was listening to your song.