Bedsitter

The follow-up to "Tainted Love" (originally recorded by Gloria Jones), "Bedsitter" was Soft Cell's first self-written song to hit the UK charts. It finds Marc Almond singing of spending Sunday alone and bored in his bedsit (the British equivalent of a studio apartment). As Almond kills time until his next night out clubbing he indulges in comfort eating ("Think it's time to cook a meal.. fill the emptiness I feel") and writes a letter ("Mother things are getting better!"). In despair, he concludes that his Saturday nights out are overrated ("Start the night life over again and kid myself I'm having fun").

Soft Cell instrumentalist Dave Ball told Mojo magazine the song was totally autobiographical. "Marc and I were both living in a housing association building in a rough part of inner-city Leeds," he recalled. "Marc had the room right next to mine. We'd pass cassettes to each other across the corridor, music and lyrics. He had a job in the bar at Leeds Playhouse in the day and a cloakroom attendant at the Warehouse in the evening. Then we'd go clubbing at night with our mates and come back to these horrible rooms."

Soft Cell recorded the song for their debut album, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. The record's theme of the glitter and grime of urban life is one that has long fascinated Marc Almond. "I've always loved the idea of glamor in squalor – filth and squalor and sleaziness and seediness – there's always something really glamorous and sort of really sparkling," he told Face magazine.