With Valentine’s Day falling on a Sunday, King Crimson founder Robert Fripp and his singer wife, Toyah Willcox, brought a little romance to their “Sunday Lunch” quarantine series. The pair performed the Soft Cell hit “Tainted Love” from their own bed, with a little sexual innuendo thrown into the visual.
By Robert and Toyah standards, the performance itself was a bit tame, compared to their previous editions of “Sunday Lunch”. As Robert played “Tainted Love” on guitar while sitting against the headboard, Toyah popped up from out of the frame with her own guitar at the foot of the bed to begin singing the tune — which was made popular by Soft Cell as a synth-pop hit in 1981 after originally being recorded by Gloria Jones in 1964.
Fripp’s face was covered in lipstick kisses, and his usual formal “Sunday Lunch” attire was in disarray, suggesting a roll in the sheets may have just taken place by the frisky couple. Maybe not as eye-catching as their cover of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”, which saw Toyah riding an exercise bike in a see-through top, but playful nonetheless.
Since that Metallica performance, which has garnered nearly 5 million YouTube views, Robert and Toyah have also offered up fun renditions of Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell”, Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle”, the Joan Jett hit “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll”, and the Jimi Hendrix classic “Purple Haze”.
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Back on Halloween, they rocked a cover of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”, with Toyah singing and dancing behind prison bars. Even Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi took notice, telling us, “I think they’ve gone mad, actually. I think this lockdown has drove them mental.”
Watch Robert Fripp and Toyah’s Valentine’s Day performance of “Tainted Love” below, complete with a fascinating painting above the headboard.
