Everything But The Girl

Songwriter: Tracey Thorn Ben Watt

Producer: Robin Millar

[Verse 1]
Who would be born into a mans's man's man's world?
But what do children care
For grownups' despair
A house can hold both boy and girl

[Verse 2]
Every mother's son grows up
And daughters imitate
And the burden of a careworn world
Is his to bear—hers to wait

[Chorus]
As the open world of a tomboy girl
Closes on a growing wife
From a childhood clear
Through teenage years
That always seem to be more
Trouble than strife

[Verse 3]
From the hot dark of night
To the cold light of day
From the cradle to wife to grave
Unless I stand in the way

[Chorus]
As the open world of a tomboy girl
Closes in with growing strife
For my own sake I'll comfort take
To know I'd never make a wife
As the open world of a tomboy girl
Closes in with growing strife
For my own sake I'll comfort take
In the knowledge that I'd never make a wife

[Instrumental]

[Chorus]
You hear them talk of women's way
With hatred, and it cuts me like a knife
Poor men, so much to bear
The children and the trouble and strife
The open world of a tomboy girl
Is the best of life
From a childhood clear
You end up here
In trouble and strife
In trouble and strife
Trouble and strife
Trouble and strife, hey

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

Love Not Money

From the album

Love Not Money (1985)

Everything But The Girl popular songs

Trouble and StrifeEverything But The Girl

Everything But The Girl

Love Not Money