"Tainted Love" as cultural object

In the opening chapter of his book Mix It Up: Popular Culture, Mass Media, and Society, sociologist David Grazian offers a brilliant deconstruction of a single cultural object, the storied history of the song “Tainted Love.”

Written by Ed Cobb, the original version of “Tainted Love” was recorded by soul singer Gloria Jones in 1964.

Seventeen years later, the U.K. duo Soft Cell would enjoy a smash hit with their cover of the same song. The Soft Cell cover of “Tainted Love” set a (then) Guinness World Record for the longest consecutive stay on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart (43 weeks).

Soft Cell member Marc Almond wrote that "his only significant contribution to the song's instrumentation was the suggestion that the song begin with a characteristic ‘bink bink’ sound which would repeat periodically throughout.”

In 2001, shock rocker Marilyn Manson recorded a cover of the song for the soundtrack to the film Not Another Teen Movie. Note how Manson slows down the song to a crawl, underscoring the grotesque -- and tainted -- aspect of the song’s primary theme, uncovering untapped dimensions in his reinterpretation.

Finally, Brazilian pop singer Rihanna sampled the bassline and signature “bink bink” beat for her song “SOS,” which paid tribute to the original song with the inclusion of the line, “I toss and turn, I can’t sleep at night.” Note how the musical score to Rhianna’s own song is built around the hook contributed by Soft Cell’s Marc Almond.

In his deconstruction of this enduring cultural object, Grazian reminds us that, “Pop music, like Greek tragedy and Elizabethan drama, can transcend its historical moment to enjoy endless cycles of rediscovery and reinvention, just as ‘Tainted Love’ began as a 1960s northern soul song, and found new life as an 1980s synth-pop classic, which two decades later would be sampled for inclusion on a 2006 R&B dance hit.”