I don't quite remember the original being a hit. A massive, gob-smacking, thirst-quenching #1 of a hit for Marc Almond and The Other One in Soft Cell in late 1981. Even that was a cover, Gloria Jones making the first version way back in 1964. The Cell never repeated at the top slot, though the supreme Say Hello, Wave Goodbye and Torch - which I can't recall hearing ever - both made the top 3 the following year.
Twenty years on from its first flush of success, and ten years since a re-issue returned the song to the top 10, it's time to reactivate a song that has, quite rightly, become a legend in its own bandbox. Marilyn Manson has chosen to take on this task. The synth stabs that planted Soft Cell's version firmly in the early 80s have gone, replaced by a guitar riff that could have come from any point in the past 30 years. Away, too, goes Marc Almond's clear diction; that has turned into a gruff growl from Marilyn Manson's lead singer, Marilyn Manson.
Yet though the cosmetic appearance has changed, the song remains beautifully intact. The singer has been let down. Where once they were pristine, now they're deflowered. This is taken literally in the accompanying video, where a regular-if-slightly-geekish girl turns into a goth goddess and is cavorting in the hot tub with the singer before the first chorus is done.
This is a strange choice of cover for the self-proclaimed hard men of rock. Their image has been built up around a fiction that they're brutal, nasty people; yet here they are lamenting their lost innocence. I hesitate to presume that the audience won't notice that fact.
Let not these thoughts distract from the bare bones. This is a jolly good cover of a phenomenal song, and can't really fail to be a hit. If it manages to cross over, it'll be Manson's first record to sell outside the sizable fan base. It might have achieved this without a video of girls cavorting in a hot tub.