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Torrent Soft Cell Discography Wikipedia3/24/2021
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Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. Paul and Linda McCartney sent the band a book with an inscription telling them how much they liked their music. Two gold and one platinum-selling albums. And, belatedly, one O.B.E.) Many of the most astounding Soft Cell stats, of course, relate to one single: the duos inspired and irresistible 1981 reworking of Tainted Love, originally an obscure Northern Soul tune by Gloria Jones. That single alone has sold 1.35 million copies, and counting. In the UK, it was by a considerable distance the biggest-selling single of 1981, and won Single Of The Year at 1982s BRIT Awards. In the US, it spent a then record-breaking 43 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 (and still features among the Top 20 longest runs in American chart history). It was also a No.1 hit in 17 countries, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany and South Africa. ![]() Almond was a Bowie and Bolan fan who arrived in Leeds from Southport, where he had studied Performance Art. Blackpool-born Ball, two years his junior, was a fan of Northern Soul and Kraftwerk, and an Art student. Given their academic specialities, its no surprise that the pairs early collaborations tended towards the transgressive, the challenging and the avant-garde: Marc would strip naked, smear himself in cat food and simulate sex with himself in front of a full-length mirror while Dave added bleeps as a soundtrack. Their first public gig came at the forward-looking Futurama festival in Leeds in 1980, at the Warehouse (where Marc had been working in the cloakroom). A frenzied 45-minute set left an unsuspecting audience applauding wildly. After a loan from Daves mother, a self-released debut EP, Mutant Moments, appeared in 1980 on their own Big Frock label containing the songs Frustration, Potential, Metro Mr X and L.O.V.E. Feelings. When this reached the ears of teenage entrepreneur Stevo Pearce, he included Soft Cells The Girl With The Patent Leather Face on a sampler album for his Some Bizzare label in 1981, and negotiated a deal with Phonogram to fund the duos first single proper. Nowadays credited as one of the tracks which invented Acid House five years early, Memorabilia failed to sell in large quantities, and Phonogram, it was assumed, would give Soft Cell one further chance to score a hit then they would be dropped. However, that second single, Tainted Love changed the course of their career, changed musical history, and changed lives. Marc was a born pop star, and rose to the role with gleeful panache. But there was always a dark, perverse intent discernible beneath the surface: this, indeed, was part of his appeal. On Soft Cells debut album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret an enduring synth pop classic the duo scraped away the surface glamour and glitz of the things we do for pleasure (foreign holidays, seedy films, live entertainment, nightclubbing) to expose the sleazy and often bleak underbelly. A sister album of remixes and rarities, titled Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing, followed in 1982, affirmed Soft Cells umbilical link to nocturnal culture on both sides of the Atlantic. It was a record that only Northerners newly-arrived in London could have made: unlike the escapist Blitz Kids, Soft Cell found romance in the grit and dirt of the West End, rather than airbrushing it out of the picture. An accompanying film, Non-Stop Exotic Video Show, directed by Tim Pope and released in 1982, found the duo giddily rampaging around the districts demi-monde of strip clubs and hookers. A News Of The World headline led to a police bust of Some Bizzares Soho offices. The chorus of Sex Dwarf, one of the albums anthemic highlights, became something of a mission statement: Isnt it nice Sugar and spice Luring disco dollies to a life of vice. Their prolific extended 12 mixes made them the toast of the burgeoning New York and London club scenes. As their fame grew, the famous, too, gravitated towards them.
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