Everything But The Girl

Songwriter: Ben Watt

Producer: Robin Millar

[Verse 1]
There's a Belfast girl I loved and lost
On the rolling hills around my home
Now she stays home nights behind locked doors
Since a plastic bullet stopped him
And he don't come no more

[Verse 2]
There's a Belfast boy was loved and lost
On the crowded streets of his own hometown
Pepper my heart with a lover's words (Yeah)
And I'll pepper yours with a Gatling gun

[Chorus]
Mother my heart is full of lead
And it weighs me down and I just can't cry
Remember me to schoolboy friends
And tell it as it was, please try

[Verse 3]
So come by my boy and sit you down
There's a tale to hear, a tale to tell this town
Oh, you say the devil will get me some day (Yeah)
You can tell him I'm waiting 'cause these are the things I must say

[Chorus]
Mother my heart is full of lead
And life holds few surprises too
Tell that to the little ones
Before they learn to laugh at you
Mother my heart is full of lead
And it weighs me down and I just can't cry
Remember me to schoolboy friends
And tell it as it was, please try

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.

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Love Not Money (1985)

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