Which one is your favorite? - XXVIII -

Here is a song from Gloria Jones released in 1965. However, most people think that it was an original from an 80s band that you will listen to below.  The song was composed by Ed Cobb, formerly of American group the Four Preps.

Here is the song for this week;

"Tainted Love"

The original version was released as the B-side of Jones's single "My Bad Boy's Comin' Home." A club DJ named Richard Searling picked up a copy in Philadelphia and in 1973 started playing it in his sets at Va Va's, a popular club in Bolton, England that was very influential on the UK northern soul circuit. 

The song found new life, and Jones recorded a new version in 1976 that was released on her album Vixen. This version was produced by her boyfriend, Marc Bolan of T-Rex (Jones joined the group as a backup singer and keyboard player in 1974). Jones was driving the car (a Mini) at the time of the accident that killed Bolan in Barnes Common, South London in 1977. This was devastating to Jones on both a personal and professional level, and her career never recovered. She later started the Marc Bolan School of Music in Sierra Leone.

Years later, it attained worldwide fame after being covered and reworked by English synth-pop duo Soft Cell in 1981 and has since been covered by numerous groups and artists. Buoyed by the then-dominant synth-pop new wave sound of the time and a memorable performance on the BBC's Top of the Pops, "Tainted Love" reached number one on the UK Singles Chart, and was the best-selling single of 1981 in the UK. A major hit during the Second British Invasion, the song spent a then-record 43 weeks on the US Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number eight.

The song is about a toxic relationship, with the singer realizing s/he's got to leave it. The song's writer, Ed Cobb, told Blender magazine: "I had a lover for whom you could say wasn't a good individual. I tried to go into her head and write a song from her standpoint. Once the word 'tainted' had popped into my head, the song was written very quickly, probably in 15 minutes."

Here are the versions I picked for you;

• Soft Cell - "Tainted Love" 

• Marilyn Manson - "Tainted Love"

• Lemar - "Tainted Love"

• Scorpions - "Tainted Love"

Now the floor is yours, go ahead and make your comments (here, Instagram, Facebook wherever you feel like...).

nb. Please note that I intentionally do not include the original versions of the songs as it would be a little unfair to the artists covering the songs, and I am sure that sometimes you will be surprised to see that the songs you thought were the originals are just covers.