Adrift from family, with no friends and no relationships, he wakes up on Sunday morning to an existential crisis, an almost annihilating vacancy: 'I think it's time to cook a meal/To fill the emptiness I feel/Spent my money going out/I've nothing in, I'm left without.' The scenario is simple, like David Bowie's The London Boys: a young man is alone in the big city, living the club life. Ridicule was nothing to be scared of, so go for it and sing about the great youth unmentionables: loneliness, isolation among your peers, the limits of hedonism as a lifestyle. The great thing about Bedsitter, apart from its melody, mood and irresistible forward motion, is that it both luxuriates in and comments on that mood of pop frivolity. 'Fuck art let's dance' was the slogan and even the hardcore social comment of the Specials' Ghost Town, the one song to underscore that year's serious unrest, was video-glossed in of-the-moment retro threads. The soul boys were back, clothed in extravagant new romantic or World's End costumes. Post-punk rigour had boxed itself into a corner. Ball understood structure and dance appeal, while Almond got the grunge beneath the glitz, the desperation behind the shiny facade of London's newly swinging club land.ġ981 was a transitional pop year. There was a gleeful glint, if not a hint of steel, in Almond's eyes as he minced and postured across the nation's TV screens: he made gender bending (as it was soon to be called) seem both totally natural and immense fun.īedsitter is cut from the same cloth as Tainted Love: sparse production, highlighting the simple, repetitive synth lines, the expressive vocal and the almost burlesque uh-uh hook cueing the verse. Soft Cell lacked both the blandness of Spandau Ballet and the all-round appeal of Adam Ant, then in his deserved pomp. Arriving in the middle of Margaret Thatcher's first-term, Almond's camp strutting and hootchy-kootch voguing came over as highly provocative: an outrage and an inspiration. There was an echo of Sparks in the heightened mismatch between David Ball (static, moustached) and Marc Almond (mobile, androgynous). These came alive on their Top of the Pops appearances. Their cover of Gloria Jones's northern soul classic (which segued, on the 12-inch, into the Supremes' Where Did Our Love Go) was a minimalist anthem that both betrayed the duo's north-western origins and made the most of their performance art leanings.

Bedsitter came off the back of Tainted Love, Soft Cell's 1981 bestselling single.

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