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Welcome to SeeDarkly Sunday DisCOVERies:
a weekly exploration of goth, industrial, & dark alternative cover songs!
First time here? Click here for details from first entry.
Welcome to my 200th entry! Let's see how we can make this one special!
It's the last part of our February focus on "Dark Valentines" where every cover has been about love, though not necessarily love that goes well. Another track worthy of the theme is one I had featured previously on a Third Sunday Throwback almost three years ago. And since it is a very familiar track that has over 200 covers of it throughout the world, now seems like an opportune time for a "Fourth Sunday Four By Four," my interstitial segment where you get to learn a little about four additional covers beyond the one we last visited.
Covers of Tainted Love by Gloria Jones have been done in a wide variety of genres but only a few are worthy of note for those musical styles we highlight here, most falling into various forms and tempos of industrial. Honestly, while Marilyn Manson's version is one of those some would consider exceptional, I'll be leaving it out because it's also an obvious and well known version and I'd rather focus on some of those you may never have encountered instead.
You can check out my previous blog detailing some of the original's history and the cover by Soft Cell by clicking this link!
Four Other Covers of Tainted Love (Gloria Jones)
My Ruin:
Vocalist and rapper, Tairrie B. Murphy, formerly of the 80's dance duo Bardeux and protege of Eazy E of N.W.A., broke onto the alternative metal scene with multi-instrumentalist Mick Murphy in 1999 with their California-based project My Ruin. They released their first single, Tainted Love, and their debut album, Speak & Destroy, in August 1999. Their version has a sauntering hard guitar rock edge and vocals that build from sultry spoken word to screams. It's one hell of an evolution from an artist who started here! While nothing specifically indicates that it had any direct influence on Marilyn Manson's 2002 version, the timing suggests it could be possible given some similarities. For some, My Ruin's is superior to Manson's, but you can judge for yourself.
Coil:
Coil was an experimental industrial project helmed by John Balance of Psychic TV. In 1985, they released their single Aqua Regis/Panic from their 1984 album Scatology featuring their depressingly downtempo (perhaps even an early ancestor of neofolk/gloomwave styles) version of Tainted Love. The cover was included on later pressings of the album after 1988. Their video for the track follows the slow death and burial of a patient in a hospital, with a dramatic appearance by Marc Almond of Soft Cell as a kind of Neil-Gaiman-esque grim reaper who eats a grape and leaves smiling as the patient dies. Producer JG Thirlwell claims the initial vocals were "too deadpan" and he had another project member twist Balance's arm behind his back "to put a bit of pain into the performance." Their version of the track is haunted with symbolism and sadness, transforming this dancey party song into a beatless instrument of melancholy minimalism, embedded with messaging about the AIDS scare of the time. All proceeds from the sale of the record were said to have been donated to the Terrence Higgins Trust, a British organization set up in 1982 devoted to HIV awareness and prevention, still providing its services today.
nTTx:
Toronto based industrialist Gord Clement, known as nTTx (Entity X), contributed his previously unreleased cover of Tainted Love to the 2017 WTII Records Label Sampler, the only cover on the various artist compilation. In July on the same release date, he put out his Of Beauty and Chaos EP featuring a cover Eye Of The Tiger by Survivor. In addition to those, he has also covered Michael Jackson's Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough and a few others. His EBM approach to the song is sprinkled with 8-bit glitch and his vocals suggest the influence of Ronan Harris from VNV Nation at work, a counterpoint of arcade bounce and angered grief.
◄SC▲P►:
Escape, stylized as "◄SC▲P►," is a one-man IDM/Witchhouse project originally from France and now based in Russia. They released their cover of Tainted Love on their second EP, Underwater in October 2014. Claiming "the atmosphere of Coil" as one of their influences, their version of the track is like Coil's in being a somewhat downtempo deconstruction of the original, but has more energy for having an actual danceable beat. It has some minor lyrical overlaps and an overall eerie and creeping character.
Rather than list the over two hundred "otherable mentions" I found in my research, leave a comment and let me know if I missed one you happen to know and really like!
(And if, after 200 weekly entries, you find this blog of any value, please click over to my profile and find out how you can leave us a tip!)
(You do NOT need a Dreamwidth account to comment, but all comments are screened for spam prevention.)
Next week:
International Women's Day is in March and last year I decided I would devote the month to covers by female artists or female-centric bands and projects. The first of them will be a darkwave/triphop collision of missiles and emotion held in the suspension of an endless curse.
Thanks for reading and keep exploring the darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Feb 17 - Wolfsheim – Love is Strange (Mickey & Sylvia)
Feb 10 - Red Light District – No Ordinary Love (Sade)
Feb 03 - The Ðevil & The Uñiverse – What Time Is Love? (The KLF)
Jan 27 - The Purge - Maps (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
Jan 20 - Pain Station - Safety Dance (Men Without Hats)
. Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies .
a weekly exploration of goth, industrial, & dark alternative cover songs!
First time here? Click here for details from first entry.
Welcome to my 200th entry! Let's see how we can make this one special!
It's the last part of our February focus on "Dark Valentines" where every cover has been about love, though not necessarily love that goes well. Another track worthy of the theme is one I had featured previously on a Third Sunday Throwback almost three years ago. And since it is a very familiar track that has over 200 covers of it throughout the world, now seems like an opportune time for a "Fourth Sunday Four By Four," my interstitial segment where you get to learn a little about four additional covers beyond the one we last visited.
Covers of Tainted Love by Gloria Jones have been done in a wide variety of genres but only a few are worthy of note for those musical styles we highlight here, most falling into various forms and tempos of industrial. Honestly, while Marilyn Manson's version is one of those some would consider exceptional, I'll be leaving it out because it's also an obvious and well known version and I'd rather focus on some of those you may never have encountered instead.
You can check out my previous blog detailing some of the original's history and the cover by Soft Cell by clicking this link!
Four Other Covers of Tainted Love (Gloria Jones)
My Ruin:
Vocalist and rapper, Tairrie B. Murphy, formerly of the 80's dance duo Bardeux and protege of Eazy E of N.W.A., broke onto the alternative metal scene with multi-instrumentalist Mick Murphy in 1999 with their California-based project My Ruin. They released their first single, Tainted Love, and their debut album, Speak & Destroy, in August 1999. Their version has a sauntering hard guitar rock edge and vocals that build from sultry spoken word to screams. It's one hell of an evolution from an artist who started here! While nothing specifically indicates that it had any direct influence on Marilyn Manson's 2002 version, the timing suggests it could be possible given some similarities. For some, My Ruin's is superior to Manson's, but you can judge for yourself.
Coil:
Coil was an experimental industrial project helmed by John Balance of Psychic TV. In 1985, they released their single Aqua Regis/Panic from their 1984 album Scatology featuring their depressingly downtempo (perhaps even an early ancestor of neofolk/gloomwave styles) version of Tainted Love. The cover was included on later pressings of the album after 1988. Their video for the track follows the slow death and burial of a patient in a hospital, with a dramatic appearance by Marc Almond of Soft Cell as a kind of Neil-Gaiman-esque grim reaper who eats a grape and leaves smiling as the patient dies. Producer JG Thirlwell claims the initial vocals were "too deadpan" and he had another project member twist Balance's arm behind his back "to put a bit of pain into the performance." Their version of the track is haunted with symbolism and sadness, transforming this dancey party song into a beatless instrument of melancholy minimalism, embedded with messaging about the AIDS scare of the time. All proceeds from the sale of the record were said to have been donated to the Terrence Higgins Trust, a British organization set up in 1982 devoted to HIV awareness and prevention, still providing its services today.
nTTx:
Toronto based industrialist Gord Clement, known as nTTx (Entity X), contributed his previously unreleased cover of Tainted Love to the 2017 WTII Records Label Sampler, the only cover on the various artist compilation. In July on the same release date, he put out his Of Beauty and Chaos EP featuring a cover Eye Of The Tiger by Survivor. In addition to those, he has also covered Michael Jackson's Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough and a few others. His EBM approach to the song is sprinkled with 8-bit glitch and his vocals suggest the influence of Ronan Harris from VNV Nation at work, a counterpoint of arcade bounce and angered grief.
◄SC▲P►:
Escape, stylized as "◄SC▲P►," is a one-man IDM/Witchhouse project originally from France and now based in Russia. They released their cover of Tainted Love on their second EP, Underwater in October 2014. Claiming "the atmosphere of Coil" as one of their influences, their version of the track is like Coil's in being a somewhat downtempo deconstruction of the original, but has more energy for having an actual danceable beat. It has some minor lyrical overlaps and an overall eerie and creeping character.
Rather than list the over two hundred "otherable mentions" I found in my research, leave a comment and let me know if I missed one you happen to know and really like!
(And if, after 200 weekly entries, you find this blog of any value, please click over to my profile and find out how you can leave us a tip!)
(You do NOT need a Dreamwidth account to comment, but all comments are screened for spam prevention.)
Next week:
International Women's Day is in March and last year I decided I would devote the month to covers by female artists or female-centric bands and projects. The first of them will be a darkwave/triphop collision of missiles and emotion held in the suspension of an endless curse.
Thanks for reading and keep exploring the darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Feb 17 - Wolfsheim – Love is Strange (Mickey & Sylvia)
Feb 10 - Red Light District – No Ordinary Love (Sade)
Feb 03 - The Ðevil & The Uñiverse – What Time Is Love? (The KLF)
Jan 27 - The Purge - Maps (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
Jan 20 - Pain Station - Safety Dance (Men Without Hats)
. Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies .