It's Halloween! As the spookiest day of the year, it's the perfect time to check out a fabulous Halloween-themed cover of Tainted Love by Broken Peach.
Halloween or Samhain (pronounced Sow-en) is a festival that used to mark the end of the harvest season and the beginning of shorter days and darker nights. It's still celebrated today by pagans and Wiccans, even though the rest of the world embraces it as a fun, supernatural holiday.
Costumes are part of the fun, and skeletons, witches, zombies and demons are seen running around everywhere with bags of sweets. That brings us back to Broken Peach. They are a Spanish cover band who distinguish themselves by putting their own quirky, fun slant on the songs they perform. They became famous in 2015 when they covered This Is Halloween from the Tim Burton movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. It was a perfect choice as it was written for multiple voices.
Broken Peach has four lead singers, and they put their stamp on the song. The singers' names are Erica Vasquez, Erika Lewis, Lara Rodriguez and Sela Periera. They inject passion and individuality into their performances and receive tremendous support from the musicians Pedro Gonzalez, Ruben Di Groovie, and Julian Rodriguez.
Last Halloween (2021), they decided to return to a spooky vibe and covered Tainted Love. The song was composed by American singer-songwriter Ed Cobb and recorded by Gloria Jones in 1964. It was only a B-side and the A-side flopped so the song didn't make much of an impact.
However, the British vocal and synth duo Soft Cell covered the song in 1981. They adjusted it a little, slowing the tempo and changing the key from C to G. They also made it fit their sound by using synthesisers and rhythm machines rather than the guitars, bass and drums used in the original. It charted at number one in five countries and reached the ton ten in five more.
The Soft Cell version already has a vaguely supernatural vibe, backed up by the star people dancing in the video. Marylin Manson also took this path in his cover in 2001. So, it seems a perfect choice for Broken Peach.
When the video begins the band is dressed as nurses and patients, possibly in a mental hospital. Their faces are painted as skeletons and the girls seem to be trying to control the boys who are acting crazy, making biting movements and struggling. The girls leave for a moment and the boys start to play, ramping up the drama.
A little while later the girls return and dance, they seem to jerk like they’re not quite in control of their limbs. The effect really is perfect. Once they start to sing, you get lost in the familiar words of the song while watching the band act and play their hearts out.
It's such a great performance and today is the perfect day to watch it, so turn off the lights, put the candle in your pumpkins and do your best monster mash. If you would like to see more from this epic band, subscribe to their YouTube channel or follow them on Facebook and Instagram. Or you can visit their official website for more information.