"Tainted Love" is a song composed by Ed Cobb, formerly of American group the Four Preps, which was originally recorded by Gloria Jones in 1964.

[3] In 1981, the song attained worldwide fame after being covered and reworked by British synth-pop duo Soft Cell for their album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.

The track's Motown-influenced sound (featuring a fast tempo, horns, electric rhythm guitar and female backing vocals) fit in perfectly with the music favoured by those involved in the UK's Northern soul club scene of the early 1970s, and Searling popularised the song at the Northern soul club Va Va's in Bolton, and later, at Wigan Casino.

[8] Owing to the new-found underground popularity of the song, Jones re-recorded "Tainted Love" in 1976 and released it as a single, but it also failed to chart.

[10] English synth-pop duo Soft Cell became aware of the song through its status as a UK "Northern soul" hit.

[16] In 2010, DJ Ian "Frank" Dewhirst claimed he was the first person to play the song for Marc Almond, the vocalist for Soft Cell.

It was good for the dance floor, but I didn't like the record...when Soft Cell performed the song I heard a very novel sound and a very nice voice, so off we went.

Marc Almond said that this decision was not the duo's, recounting, "If only we'd put our own song on it then we would be considerably richer", while David Ball described the medley as "the most costly idea of our career".

[25] Buoyed by the then-dominant new wave sound of the time and released on their album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, "Tainted Love" became a major hit in the US during the Second British Invasion, with the song spending a then-record breaking[26] 43 weeks on the US Billboard Hot 100.

[27] "Soft Cell, a tweezy synthesizer and singer duo whose fondest subject was sexual perversion, had a huge turntable hit in the clubs with "Tainted Love", which then crossed over to radio, enjoying the longest tenure, at forty-three weeks, of any single in Billboard history."

American rock band Marilyn Manson covered "Tainted Love" with an arrangement based on Soft Cell's version.

[77] The accompanying music video featured cast members Chyler Leigh, Mia Kirshner, Chris Evans and Jaime Pressly.