Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt seemed destined to meet. Both were students at Hull University and both were aspiring singer/songwriters already separately signed to London record label Cherry Red. With the record company acting as matchmaker, they intended a one-off collaboration but soon found that Watt’s guitar riffs melded so perfectly with Thorn’s effortless vocals that they became a permanent duo and later a couple (they are now married with children).
They took their name ‘Everthing But The Girl’ from the slogan on Turner’s furniture shop in Hull!
The song ‘Missing’ appeared on the album ‘Amplified Heart’, an apt title for a four minute track that hits you right where it hurts. The directness and simplicity of the lyrics, distil perfectly the heartbreak of lost love.
There is the same powerful simplicity in Tracey Thorn’s delivery of the song. When you have her natural talent – that rich tone, uniquely hers and instantly recognisable – you can afford to give a similarly natural and understated performance.
The song itself has been through various incarnations, most notably Todd Terry’s club remix. It became an iconic 90’s disco track – the romantic possibilities of a nightclub dance floor ironically juxtaposed with the romantic desolation of the song’s lyrics. But wherever and whenever you hear it, there is something instantly evocative in those opening lines that never fail to move you. It can be playing in a supermarket and instantly transport you back to a different time, as great music so often can.
The song is as dark as it is beautiful. There is something of Sting’s ‘Every Breath You Take’ in its inability to let go.
The song itself has never let me go – once heard, never forgotten.
