Marc Almond’s Ten-Song Life Story Arrives Just Before Soft Cell’s Final Bow
Marc Almond has spent nearly five decades helping soundtrack everybody else’s lives. Now the Soft Cell icon is turning the tables and naming the records that helped soundtrack his.
Almond joined BBC Radio 2 hottie host Vernon Kay for Tracks of My Years, choosing ten songs tied to different moments across his life — from childhood and art school to Soft Cell, sobriety, Dave Ball and the music that still gets him emotional today.
And naturally, the list is wonderfully all over the place: Marmalade, Sammy Davis Jr., The Kinks, Roxy Music, T. Rex, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Kate Bush, Nina Simone, Madonna and Lana Del Rey.
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Marc Almond’s Musical DNA
Ten records, decades of Soft Cell history and one gloriously dramatic musical family tree.
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The Songs Go All the Way Back to a Radio Under the Bed Sheets
Almond says his mother bought him a transistor radio when he was around ten, and he would listen to pirate stations under the bed sheets at night. Even then, he gravitated toward songs that felt a little older than he was — nostalgic, emotional and bittersweet.
That emotional streak connects directly to his first choice, Marmalade’s “Reflections of My Life,” a song he later recorded himself and says can still choke him up.
He also reveals that he originally wanted to be an actor, but growing up with a stammer made spoken performance difficult. His solution was beautifully simple: he would act through singing instead.
Soft Cell Started With a Korg Synth and Two Art-School Opposites
The Kinks’ “Lola” leads Almond into memories of meeting Dave Ball at Leeds Polytechnic. Marc was making confrontational performance art; Dave was the quiet guy with a small Korg synthesizer.
They were, as Marc puts it, basically chalk and cheese — but they shared a love of strange culture, American music and electronic experimentation.
Dave began creating soundtracks for Marc’s performances, Marc started singing Dave’s songs, disco and soul crept into the electronics, and the experiments gradually turned into Soft Cell.
Then came “Tainted Love.” The duo originally wanted one commercial song in the live set that might get people dancing. Instead, it became the record that threw two underground art-school oddballs directly into global pop stardom.
Almond says they did not handle that sudden success particularly well — and the record company quickly started telling him how to dress, how to look at the camera and, eventually, to dress down and be more macho.
Marc’s response? More eyeliner. More camp. More Marc Almond.
Kate Bush’s “Moments of Pleasure” Became Part of Marc’s Recovery
The most personal selection may be Kate Bush’s “Moments of Pleasure,” which Almond calls his favorite song.
He connects it to the period after rehab, when he returned to New York and found himself alone in an apartment during a snowstorm. As Kate sang about snow beginning to fall in New York, Marc was looking out the window at exactly that.
The song became attached to recovery, memory and starting over.
Years later, Almond also found himself sitting beside Kate Bush at a David Gilmour concert at the Royal Albert Hall — leaving the longtime fan internally panicking over what on earth he was supposed to say to her.
The Dave Ball Story Makes Danceteria Hit Much Harder
The interview arrives just weeks before Soft Cell release Danceteria, their sixth and final studio album.
Almond says he and Dave had grown warmer and closer again while making the record after periods when they could go years without speaking. They were never conventional best friends, but there was always love, respect, shared humor and that musical connection.
Then Marc reveals one extraordinary detail: two days before Dave Ball died, the pair signed off on the finished album together.
Dave asked if Marc was happy with it. Marc asked the same. Both effectively gave it a tick.
They ended their recording partnership on a high.
Two days later, Dave was gone.
The album is also a love letter to the early-’80s New York nightlife that shaped Soft Cell, taking its name from the legendary Danceteria nightclub Marc and Dave frequented during that era.
So while Tracks of My Years begins as a fun exercise in choosing favorite records, it ends up functioning as something richer: a compact musical autobiography arriving just as one of pop’s strangest and most enduring partnerships reaches its final studio chapter.
Ten songs cannot explain Marc Almond.
But honey, they certainly explain why fitting neatly into one box was never going to happen.
Watch Marc Almond Choose His Tracks of My Years for BBC Radio 2
Marc Almond joins Vernon Kay for the BBC Radio 2 conversation, revisiting the records that shaped his childhood, Soft Cell years, recovery and final album with Dave Ball.
Sources: BBC Radio 2 / Tracks of My Years; Marc Almond Official; BBC Sounds; Republic of Music.
