Soft Cell's David Ball, synth-pop hitmaker behind 'Tainted Love,' dies at 66

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David Ball of Soft Cell, whose delectably sleazy synth-pop arrangement drove that English duo’s 1981 hit “Tainted Love” to the top of the U.K.singles chart, died Wednesday.

He was 66.The producer’s death was announced in a post on Soft Cell’s website, which didn’t state a cause but said that Ball died at his home in London.On Facebook, the duo’s singer, Marc Almond, wrote that Ball’s health “had been in slow decline over recent years” due to an unspecified illness.“It is hard to write this, let alone process it, as Dave was in such a great place emotionally,” Almond said on Soft Cell’s site.

“He was focused and so happy with the new album that we literally completed only a few days ago.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.”Ball and Almond performed as Soft Cell at last month’s Rewind Festival in England; the LP they’d just wrapped is set to be titled “Danceteria” after the New York City nightclub that became an incubator of new wave and synth-pop in the early ’80s.Soft Cell was an “experimental electro band [writing] weird little pop tunes about consumerism,” as Almond told the Guardian in 2017, when the duo decided to record a cover of “Tainted Love,” which the soul singer Gloria Jones had introduced to little success in 1964.Ball devised his take on the song using his “dodgy old Korg synths” as well as a state-of-the-art Synclavier that cost more than £100,000, according to the Guardian.

Soft Cell’s cover felt “twisted and strange,” Ball said, which suited the “weird couple: Marc, this gay bloke in makeup, and me, a big guy who looked like a minder.”With Almond’s panting vocal over Ball’s sexy yet sinister production, “Tainted Love” hit No.1 in the U.K.

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