David Ball, the production half of groundbreaking Eighties synth duo Soft Cell, best remembered for their 1981 New Wave classic cover of “Tainted Love,” died on Wednesday of natural causes. He was 66.
“He will always be loved by the Soft Cell fans who love his music and his music and memory will live on,” Soft Cell singer Marc Almond said in a statement. “At any given moment, someone somewhere in the world will be getting pleasure from a Soft Cell song. Thank you Dave for being an immense part of my life and for the music you gave me. I wouldn’t be where I am without you.”
When Soft Cell initially dissolved in the mid-Eighties, Ball formed the electronic dance group the Grid alongside Richard Norris. They created the global hit “Swamp Thing” in 1994.
“Dave has been a huge part of my musical life for many years,” Norris said in a statement. “Being in a duo with someone is different from being in a band: the bond is very tight. That’s how it was with us. We went through so many remarkable, extraordinary, life-affirming experiences together. Thank you, Dave. Thanks for the good times, the endless laughter, your unwavering friendship. Most of all, thank you for the music.”
Soft Cell formed when Ball and Almond met as art students at Leeds Polytechnic in 1977. Before they became friends, Ball was aware of Almond’s reputation around campus as a daring performance artist. “His main piece was called Mirror Fucking,” Ball recalled to The Guardian in 2017. “He’d be naked in front of a full-length mirror, smearing himself with cat food and shagging himself. It provoked quite a reaction. He had heard me making bleepy noises on a synthesizer and asked me to do music for his performances. These grew into proper songs. Everyone in Leeds was into doom-laden stuff, but we wanted to do something more uplifting.”
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They played their earliest gigs at Leeds Warehouse, where Almond worked in the coat-check room. “That’s how we got the break, really,” Ball told The Yorkshire Evening Post in 2021. “We thought we were millionaires! It was like, blimey, we can actually make some money out of this.”
Ball’s mother loaned them £400 to record their debut EP Mutant Moments in 1980. That same year, they played the Futurama Festival at Queens Hall. Backstage, Ball slipped a copy of their EP to BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel. He played it on the air. Before long, they signed a deal with indie label Some Bizarre. “That was the beginning of it, really,” Ball recalled. “Then it became a very long and treacherous road.”
A key moment on that treacherous road took place when Almond heard the DJ at the Warehouse play “Tainted Love,” which was originally recorded in 1964 by soul singer Gloria Jones. Ball and Almond decided to put their own spin on the classic. “When we started on our own version, it felt twisted and strange,” Ball told The Guardian. “That suited us. We were a weird couple: Marc, this gay bloke in makeup; and me, a big guy who looked like a minder.”
“Tainted Love” was released just weeks before MTV hit the airwaves in the summer of 1981. The timing couldn’t have been better for Soft Cell since the fledgling network was desperate for content, and they played it nonstop. The song shot to Number One all across the planet, driving sales of their landmark debut LP Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.
Follow-up singles “Bedsitter,” “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye,” Torn,” and “What” were smashes across England, but they made little impact in America. And Soft Cell went on hiatus in 1984 after releasing just two more albums. Four years later, Ball formed the Grid alongside Norris. The dance group act kept Ball very busy throughout the Nineties, but a growing Eighties nostalgia movement caused him to reconcile with Almond and reform Soft Cell in 2000.
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The duo became a regular presence at Eighties festivals across Europe, and released the LP Cruelty Without Beauty in 2002 and Happiness Not Included in 2022. Their most recent gig took place on August 16 at the Rewind Festival in Henley-on-Thames, England, where they shared the bill with UB40, ABC, Squeeze, and Big Country.
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Soft Cell also recently finished a new LP. “It’s so sad as 2026 was all set to be such an uplifting year for him, and I take some solace from the fact that he heard the finished record and felt that it was a great piece of work,” Almond says in a statement. “Dave’s music is better than ever. His tunes and hooks are still unmistakably Soft Cell, yet he always took it to the next level too.”
“He was a wonderfully brilliant musical genius and the pair of us have been on a journey together for almost 50 years,” he continues. “In the early days, we were obnoxious and difficult, two belligerent art students who wanted to do things our way, even if it was the wrong way. We were naive and made mistakes, although we never really saw them as such. It was all just a part of the adventure. Dave and I were always a bit chalk-and-cheese, but maybe that’s why the chemistry between us worked so well.”