Friday, March 31, 2006

Tainted Love

After hearing the current chartbound sound SOS by Rihanna, Susan and I discussed its apparent sampling of Tainted Love, the Soft Cell version - who would get the royalties? This led to the matter of the song Tainted Love and who wrote it and of course I was able to authoritatively state it was by the great Ed Cobb who originally offered the song to the Standells, who turned it down - so it went to Gloria Jones who also recorded his 'Heartbeat' recently covered by soul-punk supremos the Detroit Cobras. Jones' version of course became a Northern soul anthem. Cobb also wrote Dirty Water and Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White. Cobb seems to have deliberately wrote lyrics that celebrated the 'bad boy' image of the band in imitation of the Stones. See clips of the Standells doing Dirty Water and appearing on the Munster show! Maybe someone might do a cover of Tainted Love one day in the style of the Standells...
Wikipedia entry on Tainted Love

No comments: