Soft Cell – *Happiness Not Included (Picture Disc)

Soft Cell have announced their first new album in 20 years. "*Happiness Not Included" will be released in the spring of 2022 via BMG. The asterisk belongs to the title.

British synth-pop duo Soft Cell was formed in Leeds in 1979 by singer Marc Almond and producer/musician David Ball, and rose to fame in 1981 with the song "Tainted Love." In the same year, their platinum-selling debut album "Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret" was released. Three more longplayers followed in the 1980s and their comeback album "Cruelty Without Beauty" in 2002. Then it became largely quiet around the band. Until now.

Frontman Marc Almond said in a press release about "*Happiness Not Included": "In this album, I wanted to look at us as a society: a place where we have chosen to put profits over people, money over morality and decency, food over animal rights, bigotry over fairness, and our own trivial comforts over the unspeakable agonies of others. But there's also a belief in the album that there is a utopia, if we can peel back the layers and understand what really matters."

The duo has recorded twelve new songs for it. With the songs "Heart Like Chernobyl" and "Bruises on My Illusions" Soft Cell already released two of them in 2021.