"And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain."note
Everything but the Girl is an English pop music duo comprised of singer Tracey Thorn and multi-instrumentalist Ben Watt. They joined forces in 1982 in Hull, England and spent the next decade making sad, sad songs with melancholy vocals and sophisticated pop beats to little acclaim. In 1995, a Todd Terry remix of "Missing" catapulted them to number two on the Hot 100 and spent over a year on the charts. This was their only real chart success, and the duo went on hiatus in 2000 after 11 albums. Today, the two are married, Ben owns a label, and Tracey still sings. In 2023, they announced their first new album in 24 years.Discography:
- Eden (1984)
- Everything But the Girl (1984)note
- Love Not Money (1985)
- Baby, the Stars Shine Bright (1986)
- Idlewild (1988)
- The Language of Life (1990)
- Worldwide (1991)
- Acoustic (1992)
- Amplified Heart (1994)
- Walking Wounded (1996)
- Tempermental (1999)
- Fuse (2023)
Baby, the Tropes Shine Bright
- Genre Shift: Went from bossa nova jazz pop to ballads to restrained '80s pop back to bossa nova jazz pop to house and drum 'n bass.
- The Oner: The video for their 2023 song "Nothing Left to Lose
" is a single-shot depiction of a café's late night denizens breaking out in abstract dance moves. - Shout-Out:
- "Baby, the Stars Shine Bright" became the name of a Japanese clothing boutique.
- The name of the band itself is a shout-out to a store: it was the slogan of a furniture store, meaning that they sell everything a man would want in a house except a girl.
- Signature Style: Tracey Thorn's depressed vocals and lots of sad lyrics.
- Take That, Critics!: Thorn intended the lyrics on "Each and Every One" to take down writers who dismissed her previous work as "not bad for a girl," but everyone took it as being lovesick about a boy.
