ALBUMMemorabilia / A Man Could Get Lost E.P.Soft Cell
ALBUMNostalgia Machine (The Remixes)Soft Cell
ALBUMNon Stop Erotic Cabaret ... And Other Stories (Live)Soft Cell
ALBUMHappiness Not IncludedSoft Cell
ALBUMCruelty Without Beauty (Remastered Edition)Soft Cell
ALBUMThis Last Night In SodomSoft Cell
ALBUMThe Art of Falling ApartSoft Cell
ALBUMNon-Stop Ecstatic DancingSoft Cell
ALBUMNon-Stop Erotic CabaretSoft Cell
Soft Cell's Popular Music Videos
Tainted Love
Soft Cell
Tainted Love
Soft Cell
Tainted Love (Lyric Video)
Soft Cell
Memorabilia
Soft Cell
Entertain Me
Soft Cell
Frustration
Soft Cell
Secret Life
Soft Cell
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye (Live At The 02 Arena, London / 2018)
Soft Cell
Together Alone (Live At The 02 Arena, London / 2018)
Soft Cell
Seedy Films
Soft Cell
Artist Playlists
Soft Cell Essentials
Icy electro-pop sung with hot human passion.
Artist Biography
Synth-pop duo Soft Cell is best known for their 1981 single “Tainted Love,” though the group had twelve Top 40 hits in their native UK.
• “Tainted Love” was an obscure Northern soul track when Gloria Jones first released it as a B-side in 1965. Soft Cell’s version was a massive hit that topped the singles chart in Britain and spent a then-record 43 consecutive weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, peaking at No. 8.
• Soft Cell formed when Marc Almond and David Ball met as university students in Leeds, England, in 1977. They recorded their debut EP, 1980’s Mutant Moments, with a loan from Ball’s mother.
• Songs on the duo’s first full-length album, 1981’s Non-Stop Erotic Caberet, reflected their penchant for squalid sexual imagery, which didn’t stop the album from going to No. 5 in Britain and No. 22 in the US.
• Along with “Tainted Love,” the album yielded two additional Top 5 singles in the UK: “Bedsitter” and “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye,” which singer David Gray later covered on his 1998 album White Ladder.
• Soft Cell’s next two albums, 1982’s Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing, and 1983’s The Art of Falling Apart, both peaked at No. 6 in the UK. After one more album, 1984’s This Last Night in Sodom, Almond and Ball split up to work on other projects.
• The pair reunited in 2001 for a string of concerts and eventually an album, 2002’s Cruelty Without Beauty.
• Ball said in 2019 that the duo had been working on a new Soft Cell album.