Songwriter: Tracey Thorn Ben Watt

Producer: Ben Watt

[Verse 1]
London, summer '92
I think I've changed a lot since then, Do you?
Ideas that I'd held for years, emotional baggage, hopes and fears
Seen somehow in a different light, not as wrong, but not as right as they seemed before
Was I different then?
Have I changed?
And will I change again?
I'm thinking of a mental free-fall, a partial total memory recall like what of the future, what of the past, what of the present will last?
And say I did forget and revert to the old days, forget this hurt
Am I better off or in reverse, untaught by experience and therefore worse?

[Refrain]
I mean a lot, I mean a little
I mean a lot, I mean a little

[Verse 2]
I'm like a coastline, a beach and spit
Spurn Point and the rest of it
The sea, the tide, the salt and foam
I'm the blasted land, the sand shifting, drifting out and back, then breached, drowned, defenses down, rebuilt from this day on
Or maybe not, maybe my moment's gone

[Refrain]
I mean a lot, I mean a little
I mean a lot, I mean a little

[Verse 3]
Am I the same person I seemed to be?
Does all of this depress me?
I won't listen, I won't talk
A weightless life, I moonwalk
I mean a lot, I mean a little
I'm supple, brittle, pig in the middle
There's resilience inside my face, but sometimes nothing
Deep space
What I feel and what I fear is always here my atmosphere
Pig in the middle

[Refrain]
I mean a lot, I mean a little
I mean a lot, I mean a little

Everything But The Girl

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.