Everything But The Girl

Songwriter: Tracey Thorn

Producer: Ben Watt

[Verse 1]
When I was ten, I thought my brother was God
He'd lie in bed and turn out the light with a fishing rod
I learned the names of all his football team
And I still remembered them when I was nineteen, yeah

[Verse 2]
Strange the things that I remember still
Shouts from the playground when I was home and ill
My sister taught me all that she learned there
When we grew up, we said, we'd share a flat somewhere

[Chorus]
When I was seventeen
London meant Oxford Street

[Verse 3]
Where I grew up there were no factories
There was a school and shops and some fields and trees
Rows of houses one by one appeared
I was born in one and lived there for eighteen years

[Chorus]
Then when I was nineteen
I thought the Humber would be
The gateway from my little world
Into the real world
But there is no real world
We live side by side and sometimes collide
When I was seventeen
London meant Oxford Street
It was a little world
I grew up in a little world
There is no real world
We live side by side and sometimes collide, yeah

Originating at the turn of the 1980s as a leader of the lite-jazz movement, Everything but the Girl became an unlikely success story more than a decade later, emerging at the vanguard of the fusion between pop and electronica.

Founded in 1982 by Hull University students Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, the duo took their name from a sign placed in the window of a local furniture shop, which claimed “for your bedroom needs, we sell everything but the girl.” At the time of their formation, both vocalist Thorn and songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Watt were already signed independently to the Cherry Red label; Thorn was a member of the sublime Marine Girls, while Watt had issued several solo singles and also collaborated with Robert Wyatt.

Everything but the Girl debuted in 1982 with a samba interpretation of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day”; the single was a success on the U.K. independent charts, but the duo nonetheless went on hiatus as Thorn recorded a solo EP, A Distant Shore, while Watt checked in with the full-length North Marine Drive in 1983. EBTG soon reunited to record a cover of the Jam’s “English Rose” for an NME sampler; the track so impressed former Jam frontman Paul Weller that he invited the duo to contribute to the 1984 LP Cafe Bleu, the debut from his new project, the Style Council.

more tracks from the album

Idlewild

From the album

Idlewild (1988)

Everything But The Girl popular songs

Oxford StreetEverything But The Girl

Everything But The Girl

Idlewild