Everyone has their own personal genre favorites. I'm not a huge 80s nostalgia buff, but I will drop everything at the drop of a hat if I'm out and they play anything off my all-time favorite synthpop album: Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret by Soft Cell.This whole album is killer. Every single song is a classic. "Tainted Love" is the song everyone in the US knows, but it's actually not my favorite track. That honor falls to "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye" - it's got the wit, the cheesy keyboards, and the lyrics that just perfectly mesh with certain people I know. "Sex Dwarf". "Seedy Films". "Secret Life". "Entertain Me". I love how the album revels in the sleaze. Yeah, I lived in New York in the 1970s, but I was about three years old and don't remember anything important. But listening to Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, I feel like I know it intimately. This is the Taxi Driver big city, full of dark alleys and neon lights. Of going to a club and sitting on a torn pleather couch that's wet and sticky but nobody spilled a drink. Of not making eye contact with the person dancing behind a pane of glass. The only song on the album that I didn't really care for was "Frustration", but even that grew on me. Maybe I just needed more years of go-nowhere jobs and bills for that one to sink in. But now that it has, I can safely say that there's not a bad song here. Get it if you don't already have it. And for my Pittsburgh friends whose football season starts tonight: Knock 'em cold in black and gold!