"No One Knows We're Dancing" by Everything But The Girl

We now have an official video for "No One Knows We're Dancing" by Everything But The Girl from their brand new (after 24 years!) release "Fuse."

First up, this is Fabio
He drives here from Torino
Parking tickets litter
His Fiat Cinquecento
Fiat Cinquecento
His Fiat Cinquecento
Fiat Cinquecento

Amy is the sweetest
Works weekdays in a pet shop
Mixes vodka with her cola
She knows everybody's name
Everybody's name
She knows everybody's name
Everybody's name

It's 5PM on Sunday
No one knows we're dancing
Outside, the sun is blinding
No one knows we're dancing

Behind the bar is Peter
His father is a lawyer
For the EU out of Munich
He does London, Paris, Munich
London, Paris, Munich
He does London, Paris, Munich
London, Paris, Rome

It's 5PM on Sunday
No one knows we're dancing
Outside, the sun is blinding
No one knows we're dancing

All the Croyden boys are over
All the girls and night-off waiters
Sweat falls off the ceiling
We're all trapped in a feeling

(No one knows we're dancing)

It's 5PM on Sunday
No one knows we're dancing
Outside, the sun is blinding
No one knows we're dancing

Photo by Edward Bishop

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"Run A Red Light" Live by Everything But The Girl

So fantastic to see Tracey and Ben (Everything But The Girl) create this song live at the BBC studios...*goosebumps*

You can see the official video for "Run A Red Light' and read their explanation of the lyrics here.

Their new album "Fuse" is out now.
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"No One Knows We're Dancing" by Everything But The Girl

Another spectacular song from the new Everything But The Girl release "Fuse" out now! This is "No One Knows We're Dancing" which is a moody tone poem about a day-time club...

Everything But The Girl - Photo by Edward Bishop

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"Run A Red Light" by Everything But The Girl

Ah, here's another song released from the upcoming Everything But The Girl album "Fuse," their first in twenty four years! I must say Tracey's lower, richer tone really works on this beautiful, moody piece, "Run A Red Light."

Cashed up and all set
It’s a lock-in here until he says so
A little bump from a car key
Sit back darling, it’s all about us

Forget the losers, forget the morning
Put a tune on, and put your feet up
It was my idea, I hope you know that
We’re gonna have this, I’m the one now

Run a red light
Forget the morning
This is tonight

It’s the bar take not the door split
A few weeks and I can work it
Keep it simple, keep the same crowd
We’re on the inside, I’m the one now
Yeah I’m the one now

It’s 2am, we’re leaving loudly
Wake the neighbours, we won’t come quietly
They’ll all know my name soon
Anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway

Run a red light
Forget the morning
This is tonight

Ben and Tracey explain the song:

"It’s the third track so far from the new album, 'Fuse' (out Apr 21), and is actually the oldest song to feature on the record. Unlike most of the new material - which was written in a burst of creativity last year - Ben wrote it a few years ago, but never recorded it.

It was one evening last summer when he played Tracey some older rough sketches and demos he had on his phone as possible inspirations for the new album. One of them was a version of this abandoned song. As soon as Tracey heard it she wanted to sing it. Ben had originally written it for himself, but never settled on how to record it. Tracey loved the melody and kept it. It took her voice low into her register. She really enjoyed exploiting that tone, bringing out all the resonance of the deep notes, singing it close to the mic, like she was whispering in someone’s ear.

The lyric of the song talks about the kind of character Ben often used to run into during his years of DJing - the guy at the end of the night who is all talk, all full of big wild ideas, dreaming of the day he’s gonna run his own club and be a big shot. But there’s a mixture of bravado and vulnerability in there - a sense that for all his apparent confidence, at heart he’s just a dreamer.

We feel that combination of attitude and emotion is captured beautifully by Samuel, the main dancer in the video, and it’s another example of the kind of mixed feelings that we so often inject into our songs. We’re always drawn to people and situations which are complicated, or which give rise to ambivalent feelings. We love the shifting perspective, the uncertainty, the doubt that underpins so much of what motivates people.

That mix of bravado and vulnerability is present in this photo too - maybe it always is in the photos we like best. The camera is good at capturing fleeting moments, tiny flickers of changing mood."

"Fuse" will be released in just a few weeks. I can't wait.
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"Caution To The Wind" by Everything But The Girl

Here is "Caution To The Wind," another exciting song from the new Everything But The Girl release "Fuse"...their first in 24 years! See their other song "Nothing Left To Lose" here. It's so good to have them back.

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"Nothing Left To Lose" by Everything But The Girl

In a jaw-dropping surprise announcement on November 2, 2022 via their new Instagram account, the extraordinary duo known as Everything But The Girl (Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, previously here) said they had recorded a new album...the first in 24 years. TWENTY FOUR YEARS! It is called "Fuse," released in April of 2023 and the first single from it is called "Nothing Left To Lose", seen below. And I am a little speechless... Tracey's voice is lower and has a different timbre, and while the music sounds like it's picked right up from their last two albums, "Walking Wounded" (1996) and "Temperamental" (1999), there is an undeniable sense of "now.". It's...just...wow, as an EBTG fan from the very start, it's emotional for me to hear this. "Kiss me while the world decays..."

Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn are Everything But The Girl 2023, Photo by Edward Bishop

Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn are Everything But The Girl 1995

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The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Single" by Everything But The Girl

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I am posting song lyrics from different genres that double as exquisite poetry.

This melancholy mediation on a dissolved relationship in "Single" by Everything But The Girl (Ben Watt and singer Tracey Thorn, previously here--with lyrics by Thorn) is a much more introspective affair than the usual break-up song. It has a world-weary, gentle quality, steeped in a hard-earned wisdom.

Single 

by Everything But The Girl

   
I called you from the hotel phone
I haven't dialed this code before
I'm sleeping later and waking later
I'm eating less and thinking more
And how am I without you?
Am I more myself or less myself?
I feel younger, louder
Like I don't always connect
Like I don't ever connect

And do you like being single?
Do you want me back?
Do you want me back?
And do I like being single?
Am I coming back?
Am I coming back?

I'll put my suitcase here for now
I'll turn the TV to the bed
But if no one calls and I don't speak all-day
Do I disappear?
And look at me without you
I'm quite proud of myself
I feel reckless, clumsy
Like I'm making a bad mistake
A really big mistake

And do you like being single?
Do you want me back?
Do you want me back?
And do I like being single?
Am I coming back?
Am I coming back?
Do you want me back?

And now I know
Each time I go
I don't really know

What I'm thinking
And now I know
Each time I go
I don't really know
What I'm thinking of

Do you want me back?

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Currently listening to...

..."Missing" by Everything But The Girl (previously here), a song that makes me nostalgic and heartsick every time I hear it.

Everything But The Girl was how musician Ben Watt and singer Tracey Thorn (previously here, here, and here) styled themselves and I adore them. The group started in the neo-jazz groove of the mid-80s and morphed into a spectacular dance band in the 90s. But it is Thorn's voice that has always been front and center, no matter what the music style. Watt and Thorn wrote some stunning lyrics but I have a soft spot for this particular song for several personal reasons. It came out around the time a very influential and important friend in my life died. After her death I would drive past her house in Berkeley and think, just like the lyrics to this song, "...but you don't live there anymore."

And to make matters worse, there is another layer. I stayed here in California when my parents moved back to the east coast in the late 90s; my mom wrote me regular letters and closed once with a quote from the song: "I miss you like the deserts miss the rain." She and my father passed away a year later.

Yes, missing....as in "yearning for," but also as in "disappeared."

I step off the train
I'm walking down your street again
And past your door, but you don't live there anymore
It's years since you've been there
Now you've disappeared somewhere like outer space
You've found some better place

And I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain

Could you be dead?
You always were two steps ahead of everyone
We'd walk behind while you would run
I look up at your house
And I can almost hear you shout down to me
Where I always used to be

And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain

Back on the train, I ask why did I come again?
Can I confess, I've been hanging round your old address?
And the years have proved
To offer nothing since you've moved
You're long gone, but I can't move on

And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you

I step off the train
I'm walking down your street again
And past your door, I guess you don't live there anymore
It's years since you've been there
Now you've disappeared somewhere like outer space
You've found some better place

And I miss you
And I miss you
You found some better place

And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you, yeah, like the deserts miss the rain

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http://splash.traceythorn.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Hatfield 1980" and "Missing"

For this installment of The Poetry of Rock n' Roll in honor of National Poetry Month, I give you a two-fer.

Everything But The Girl was how musician Ben Watt and singer Tracey Thorn styled themselves and I adore them. The group started in the neo-jazz groove of the mid-80s and morphed into a spectacular dance band in the 90s. But it is Thorn's voice that has always been front and center, no matter what the music style. Watt and Thorn wrote some stunning lyrics and although I narrowed down the list, I couldn't choose between these final two. They both resonate with me personally. "Hatfield 1980" could be about the suburban city I moved to in 1980 when my family came to California from the east coast. It was a rather savage working class/middle class area. And I did get beaten up by the playground (I am sure every adult gay man has such a survival story)--but that was the least of the violence hurled at me during my time there.

"Hatfield 1980"
by Everything But The Girl

Suburbia, 1 am
You're walking home again
Shopping bags and broken glass
I hate going through the underpass
I wish there was some other way around
But you got beaten up by the playground
And it's no use
You'll have to go through
Suburban shopping centre
Pedestrian walkways
I think they were meant to make things better
But it's just emptier
And scary at night-time
Hatfield,... at that time

This is the place I live
Where is everyone? Are we the only ones?
This is the place I live
And so does everyone, and so does everyone

Hatfield 1980
I'm seeing my first knife
My first ambulance ride
I hold your hand the whole way, crying
Get home the next day
Police have already been
Well, you can imagine the scene

And if I'm going home
I better change my clothes, I better change my clothes

This is the place I live
Where is everyone? Are we the only ones?
This is the place I live
And so does everyone, and so does everyone

When I'm looking back I look for everyone
And when I fall down I fall for anyone
When I'm looking back I look for everyone
And when I fall down I fall for anyone

I don't live in that city anymore, but over the decades, like most suburban areas of the San Francisco Bay Area, the city in question has become gentrified and is now quite upscale. I still live here in the Bay Area and if I have reason to go there or pass through, I marvel at how incredibly different it looks and feels. But there are those of us who recall it before...

I have a soft spot for this next song for, again, several personal reasons. It came out around the time a very influential and important friend in my life died. After her death I would drive past her house in Berkeley and think, just like the lyrics to this song, "...but you don't live there anymore."

And to make matters worse, there is another layer. I stayed here in California when my parents moved back to the east coast in the late 90s; my mom wrote me regular letters and closed once with a quote from the song: "I miss you like the deserts miss the rain." She and my father passed away a year later.

Yes, missing....as in "yearning for," but also as in "disappeared."

"Missing"
by Everything But The Girl

I step off the train
I'm walking down your street again
And past your door, but you don't live there anymore
It's years since you've been there
Now you've disappeared somewhere like outer space
You've found some better place

And I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain

Could you be dead?
You always were two steps ahead of everyone
We'd walk behind while you would run
I look up at your house
And I can almost hear you shout down to me
Where I always used to be

And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain

Back on the train, I ask why did I come again?
Can I confess, I've been hanging round your old address?
And the years have proved
To offer nothing since you've moved
You're long gone, but I can't move on

And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you

I step off the train
I'm walking down your street again
And past your door, I guess you don't live there anymore
It's years since you've been there
Now you've disappeared somewhere like outer space
You've found some better place

And I miss you
And I miss you
You found some better place

And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain
And I miss you, yeah, like the deserts miss the rain

http://www.ebtg.com/