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Seedy Films was a huge highlight from Soft Cell’s Non Stop Erotic Cabaret. What really makes this song work–in fact, something that generally made Soft Cell work–is singer Marc Almond’s voice. He really does a great job of interjecting emotion and presence into his voice, and on this song he’s just dripping with sleaze. I love it.

The song itself is about a man whiling his time away in an adult movie theater (yes, they had those way back in the day–ask Pee Wee Herman), possibly with a prostitute soliciting easy favors from overworked, over-stimulated men. That being said, one of the other things that makes this song work is whomever is doing the female vocals (the only credit I can find is for Vicious Pink Phenomena). Whoever she is, she brings a nice casual, but equally sleazy counterpoint to the song, and their banter sounds almost natural. Throw in the cool saxaphones, and it’s really a winner.

Here’s a link to the video (I didn’t even know there was a video until tonight)

And of course, the lyrics:

Sleazy city
Seedy films
Breathing so heavy
Next to my neighbour
Let’s get acquainted
Getting to know you
Feeling sleazy
In seedy sin city
Feeling sleazy
In seedy sin city

Getting to know you
Getting to like you
etc…