Marilyn Manson-Tainted Love feature by John M Ellison IV

Holy crap Marilyn Manson does a lot of covers, I mean from Gary Numan, AC/DC, John Lennon, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins…the list goes on! Anyway, I’m going to focus on Marilyn Manson’s cover of the Gloria Jones classic “Tainted Love.” This version was originally featured on the “Not Another Teen Movie” soundtrack and was tagged on as bonus track on Marilyn Manson’s Golden Age of Grotesque.

This version of the northern soul classic is more of a darker re-imagining of the cover by post-punk band Soft Cell. So, it’s kind of like a cover of a cover…if that makes sense to you. This version is produced by Marilyn Manson, Tim Skold of KMFDM and also collaborator on Marilyn Manson’s “Eat Me Drink Me” album and Ben Grosse. What really caught my ear is a drum sound on this song that I can best describe as a “Roland drum machine from Hell” that gives it kind of an industrial crunk kind of sound. With that, it’s accompanied with heavy guitars and Manson’s trademark strained, wailing vocal.

Like most of his covers, they’re a dark yet refreshing re-visioning of a classic. Enjoy.