Tune of the Week: Tainted Love

Coil’s second album, “Horse Rotorvator”, was created during the AIDS epidemic. Then member Stephen Thrower said in a recent interview that the album was absolutely a reflection of those horrendous times for LBGTQ+ people. “We felt that other gay artists weren’t really getting to the dark heart of it, and the sheer horror of what was going on. But we had a toolkit to confront it.”

A B-Side for a single released just a year before was for their cover of Soft Cell’s cover of Glora Jones’ “Tainted Love”. Whereas Soft Cell had turned the R’n’B number into a synthpop classic, Coil opts for a funeral dirge interpretation. The desperate theme continues through the music video which features a cameo from Marc Almond, the singer for Soft Cell.