Soft Cell
By All Music Guide
By All Music Guide
It was the next Soft Cell effort, 1981s Tainted Love, that brought the duo to international prominence; written by the Four Preps Ed Cobb and already a cult favorite thanks to Gloria Jones soulful reading, the song was reinvented as a hypnotic electronic dirge which became the years best-selling British single, as well as a major hit abroad. The groups debut LP, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, was also enormously successful, and was followed by the 1982 remix collection Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing.
While 1983s The Art of Falling Apart proved as popular as its predecessors, the LPs title broadly hinted at the internal problems plaguing the duo; prior to the release of 1984s This Last Night in Sodom, Soft Cell had already broken up. Almond immediately formed the electro-soul unit Marc and the Mambas; another group, Marc Almond and the Willing Sinners, followed before the singer finally embarked on a solo career in the late 80s. After a number of years of relative inactivity, Ball later resurfaced in the techno outfit the Grid.
