Bedsitter

Marc Almond and Dave Ball wrote "Bedsitter", produced by Mike Thorne, released on November 2, 1981 on Some Bizzare with "Facility Girls" on the B-side. The single is 3:36. It reached 4 on the UK chart, spending 12 weeks and entering on November 14, 1981, and Songfacts calls it the first self-written Soft Cell song to chart. Ball says it was autobiographical, drawn from their time in a rundown Leeds housing block, and Songfacts quotes him: Marc had the room right next to mine. They traded cassettes of music and lyrics across the hallway; Almond worked at the Leeds Playhouse bar and the Warehouse cloakroom. Wikipedia instead describes the underbelly of London club life, and we give Ball's account, as the primary one.

Ball credits the Korg SB-100 Synthe Bass, with its pitch bender, for the Duane Eddy-style twang, and a Roland TR-808 for drums. He recalled the label saying we don't think it's good enough, and that Thorne helped persuade them to release it; it was recorded in New York during the album sessions. Tim Pope directed the video, his first: Almond's shirts match the wallpaper so he seems to vanish, and it was shown on Top of the Pops. It appears on Non-Stop Exotic Video Show (1982). Jon Savage called it one of the greatest songs of the 1980s, and Neil Tennant chose it for the Guardian's Soundtrack of My Life in 2006.

They played it at the O2 Arena on September 30, 2018, 27th of 30 songs, and at the Beacon Theatre in New York on August 30, 2022. We could not obtain a setlist.fm play count, found no covers or samples, and have not verified which version our upload is, though it is presumably the single.