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.
https://ebtg.com/
Showing posts with label Tracey Thorn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tracey Thorn. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 3, 2023
Tuesday, May 2, 2023
"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...
https://ebtg.com/
 |
| Everything But The Girl - Photo by Edward Bishop |
https://ebtg.com/
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
"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.
https://ebtg.com/
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.
https://ebtg.com/
Thursday, February 23, 2023
"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.
https://ebtg.com/
https://ebtg.com/
Wednesday, January 11, 2023
"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..."
https://ebtg.com/
 |
| 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 |
https://ebtg.com/
Friday, May 25, 2018
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
http://ebtg.com/
http://splash.traceythorn.com/
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
http://ebtg.com/
http://splash.traceythorn.com/
Thursday, March 8, 2018
"Sister" by Tracey Thorn
For International Women's Day, here is Tracey Thorn's new anthem/protest song "Sister" from her new release "Record."
Don't mess with me
Don't hurt my babies
I'll come for you
You'll find you've bitten off more than you can chew
You are the man
But I'm not your baby
I get so scared
I know you own the world
And I fight like a girl
But I am my mother
I am my mother now
I am my sister
And I fight like a girl
All I can do is all I'm doing
All I can stand
You trample like dirt
But I'm used to things that hurt
Oh, little man,
You're such a baby
Put up your fists
Nobody ever loved
Someone they were afraid of
I am my mother
I am my mother now
I am my sister
And I fight like a girl
Oh, what year is it?
Still arguing the same sh*t
What year is it?
Same same old sh*t
I get so scared
Tell me you'll stand beside me
Is that enough?
No nothing is enough
Nobody is that tough
And I miss my mother
I miss my mother now
Thank god for my sister
And for all the girls
And I am my mother
I am my mother now
I am my sister
And I live like a girl
And I love like a girl
And I think like a girl
And I fight like a girl,
Like a girl
http://splash.traceythorn.com/
Don't mess with me
Don't hurt my babies
I'll come for you
You'll find you've bitten off more than you can chew
You are the man
But I'm not your baby
I get so scared
I know you own the world
And I fight like a girl
But I am my mother
I am my mother now
I am my sister
And I fight like a girl
All I can do is all I'm doing
All I can stand
You trample like dirt
But I'm used to things that hurt
Oh, little man,
You're such a baby
Put up your fists
Nobody ever loved
Someone they were afraid of
I am my mother
I am my mother now
I am my sister
And I fight like a girl
Oh, what year is it?
Still arguing the same sh*t
What year is it?
Same same old sh*t
I get so scared
Tell me you'll stand beside me
Is that enough?
No nothing is enough
Nobody is that tough
And I miss my mother
I miss my mother now
Thank god for my sister
And for all the girls
And I am my mother
I am my mother now
I am my sister
And I live like a girl
And I love like a girl
And I think like a girl
And I fight like a girl,
Like a girl
http://splash.traceythorn.com/
Monday, February 26, 2018
"Protection" by Massive Attack and Tracey Thorn
After my recent post of Tracey Thorn's welcome new single "Queen" here, I took a peek back at some of her past performances and songs. While it is hard to narrow down an enormous catalog of gorgeous songs (whether with Everything But The Girl, solo, or in collaboration), this 1994 song she did with Massive Attack is pretty special. Tender, touching, lugubrious, somnolent, "Protection" is a dream-like affair about domestic violence, courage, safety, healing, and simply getting through life. The one-take video (directed by Michel Gondry who made "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "The Science of Sleep") sums up the feeling quite well.
This girl I know needs some shelter
She don't believe anyone can help her
She's doing so much harm, doing so much damage
But you don't want to get involved
You tell her she can manage
And you can't change the way she feels
But you could put your arms around her
I know you want to live yourself
But could you forgive yourself
If you left her just the way
You found her
I'll stand in front of you
I'll take the force of the blow
Protection
You're a boy and I'm a girl
But you know you can lean on me
And I don't have no fear
I'll take on any man here
Who says that's not the way it should be
I'll stand in front of you
I'll take the force of the blow
Protection
She's a girl and you're a boy
Sometimes you look so small, you look so small
You've got a baby of your own
When your baby's gone, she'll be the one
To catch you when you fall
I'll stand in front of you
I'll take the force of the blow
Protection
You're a girl and I'm a boy
http://www.massiveattack.co.uk/
http://splash.traceythorn.com/
This girl I know needs some shelter
She don't believe anyone can help her
She's doing so much harm, doing so much damage
But you don't want to get involved
You tell her she can manage
And you can't change the way she feels
But you could put your arms around her
I know you want to live yourself
But could you forgive yourself
If you left her just the way
You found her
I'll stand in front of you
I'll take the force of the blow
Protection
You're a boy and I'm a girl
But you know you can lean on me
And I don't have no fear
I'll take on any man here
Who says that's not the way it should be
I'll stand in front of you
I'll take the force of the blow
Protection
She's a girl and you're a boy
Sometimes you look so small, you look so small
You've got a baby of your own
When your baby's gone, she'll be the one
To catch you when you fall
I'll stand in front of you
I'll take the force of the blow
Protection
You're a girl and I'm a boy
http://www.massiveattack.co.uk/
http://splash.traceythorn.com/
Monday, February 5, 2018
"Queen" by TraceyThorn
Welcome back, Tracey!
Iconic English singer Tracey Thorn who fronted Everything But The Girl with her husband Ben Watt for decades and then struck out on her own (musically speaking), is back after an eight year hiatus (if you don't count "Tinsel and Lights," her album of holiday songs in 2012) with an album entitled, simply, "Record." And the first single from this album is a glorious, electronic, bouncing affair called "Queen."
You're still a Queen, Tracey!
"Record" will be released March 2, 2018.
http://traceythorn.com/
http://ebtg.com/
Iconic English singer Tracey Thorn who fronted Everything But The Girl with her husband Ben Watt for decades and then struck out on her own (musically speaking), is back after an eight year hiatus (if you don't count "Tinsel and Lights," her album of holiday songs in 2012) with an album entitled, simply, "Record." And the first single from this album is a glorious, electronic, bouncing affair called "Queen."
You're still a Queen, Tracey!
"Record" will be released March 2, 2018.
http://traceythorn.com/
http://ebtg.com/
Monday, December 10, 2012
"Joy" by Tracey Thorn
Tracey Thorn, she of the glorious, mellifluous voice, last month released a collection of holiday songs called "Tinsel and Lights." The album features re-interpreted cover songs save for two written by Thorn. This is her original song "Joy," so simple, heartfelt, and lovely, in which she addresses the preciousness, fragility, and resiliency of the human condition by singing the line, “We must be alright if we can make up Christmas night.”
The video was filmed at the Marché de Noël (Christmas Market) in Lille, France.
A highlight of the release is a duet with Green Gartside (whom I adore) on a song called "Taking Down The Tree" which I will wait to post until I take down my own holiday tree!
http://www.traceythorn.com/
The video was filmed at the Marché de Noël (Christmas Market) in Lille, France.
A highlight of the release is a duet with Green Gartside (whom I adore) on a song called "Taking Down The Tree" which I will wait to post until I take down my own holiday tree!
http://www.traceythorn.com/
Saturday, November 20, 2010
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