Me and Jack had a big argument about one of my favourite albums ‘Non-stop erotic cabaret’ by Soft Cell. You know, Tainted love.

It happened because we have a big group chat where we rank albums against each other. I’m not that up to date with it usually, but I opened and saw this:

We’re not on talking terms now.

But first, I punched in:

Sorry what the fuck? Have you even listened to non stop? Shut your actual fucking mouth. It’s flawless.

To clarify, I mean tracks from 01 frustration to say hello wave goodbye. The rest are technically bonus tracks.

Still, I don’t know how you can say an album like that is filler, when it’s quite literally an epic run of tracks that tell a story and follow a trail. Hence the name non stop erotic cabaret. Maybe what you mean to say is ‘im an NPC and have only listened to tainted love.’

Me

I thought I had won there, but no. I checked the next day to see I had been completely annihilated:

well, seeing as you have followed up, let’s dive in…

i find non-stop erotic cabaret to be a cheeky, approachable synth-pop record that is decently successful in what it sets out to do. adverse to your claim, i have indeed listened to the entire album, and i would not even go so far as to say “tainted love” is the best song on the record. that would have to be “chips on my shoulder”. while i did have a fair amount of fun listening to this record, there were a number of factors that, in my opinion, certainly keep it from the title of ‘flawless’. for one, i find the lyrics and vocal performance to be slightly robotic and repetitive at the best of times. usually, this wouldn’t be detrimental to my outlook on an album experience, as i am very much acquainted with such vocal styles and i often enjoy them in moderation. however, when paired with the already revolvingly electric sound of an 80s poster boy synth-pop album, this effect casts a spell of stagnation on the record, where many tracks sound similar, and the album ceases to feel like it progresses at a stimulating rate. this isn’t totally damning, though, as some tracks like “chips on my shoulder” offer the speed and heat that ensure the album run doesn’t feel like it is completely motionless. my claim of “70% filler” refers to the fact that i found approximately 70% of the tracks to offer energies and performances that were too homogeneous to command true individuality. i do respect the album’s effort to tell the story of an ordinary man who grows tired of the every-day, and i think this is one of the more impressive feats accomplished by soft cell on this album. however, just because an album succeeds in communicating a linear storyline to audiences does not immediately assign it a legendary status – at least, according to me. many concept albums do exist (“the wall” – pink floyd, for example) and end up being an artist’s weaker piece of work. i do quite like non-stop erotic cabaret, in spite of any indications otherwise, but i have made it clear i do not necessarily adore it. and i think that’s sufficient of soft cell, especially given that i am not a diehard synth-pop listener, though i do indulge in a fair amount of it. if i were to assign the album a numerical score, it would earn 6/10, which decrees it is fairly above average (average score is 5/10). my claim that picking prince’s “purple rain” would be a ‘no-brainer’ is more a show of praise to purple rain, and less a shot at cabaret. purple rain is one of prince’s best, and although both the albums in question are definitely in the upper half of the 32 contenders in this tournament, purple rain steals the show.

Jack

I didn’t realise who I was messing with. Sorry, Jack.

Your take totally makes sense, I hope you didn’t mind me lashing out. (I was just ragebaiting obviously 😉 And my points about why I think it’s flawless were quite weak and irrelevant on paper, and are definitely more personal than critical. Perhaps I look at the album fondly through a cultural lens, but it still took years of me actually enjoying the tunes to become so familiar with it’s movement. But now we’ve got it down to the hinges, there’s no real argument to be won on the % of filler the album contains. I appreciate why you’ve scored the album that way, but for the sake of argument: I find it quite shocking that chips on your shoulder is your favourite, when that – to me – is the most monotonous track on the album! Every song until chips is beautifully crafted with cutting edge rhythms (of it’s time) that never fail to drop the momentum even with track 3’s slower ‘seedy films’ I’m glad you pointed out that the album’s cheeky, because at some points it definitely feels wrong to listen to (sex dwarf is still the deepest cutting banger though) I’ve always thought that this album deserves a musical… And if you don’t like the kind of musicals (or musicals at all) this would end up being, then it makes a lot of sense why my views of this album might be different to yours.

This will be the last time Jack appears on this blog, I fucking hate that guy.