Tracey Thorn

Born, in Hatfield, England, singer Tracey Thorn originally got into music to meet boys. It worked, but not the way Thorn thought it would. She was in a couple of bands as a teenager, but her talent wasn't recognized until she went to University of Hull in 1981 and met Ben Watt. The two of them meshed romantically and creatively, forming the duo Everything But the Girl in 1982. From 1984 through 2000, Everything But the Girl released nine studio albums and in 1995 had a worldwide hit single that put Thorn's voice on dance floors everywhere. The couple put the band on hiatus in 2000, before Thorn began to release solo albums and in 2013 published an acclaimed, best-selling memoir, Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to Be a Pop Star. As a teenager growing up in a small suburban town near London, Thorn discovered punk rock during the initial 1977 explosion. Inspired by the DIY aesthetic, she picked up a guitar and started to play in a local teen band. She formed the Marine Girls, an all-girl post-punk band with some school friends; their two albums, Beach Party (1982) and Lazy Ways (1983), became extremely influential on what would soon be known as the twee-pop scene. Between the two albums, Thorn started classes at University of Hull, and on her first day at school met a singer/songwriter named Ben Watt, who was a solo artist signed to the same label as the Marine Girls, Cherry Red Records. In Watt, Thorn met a soul mate, and found her voice. Although Thorn's immediate focus was on her first solo album, A Distant Shore (1983), the budding young couple joined forces in the collaboration Everything But the Girl, impulsively named after a sign in a local shop. The duo's jazz leanings (Watt's father, Tommy Watt, had been a noted British jazz musician in the 1960s) and Thorn's butter-smooth voice and modern, feminist songwriting sensibility made them an instant indie success. Their first album, 1984's Eden produced their first U.K. top 40 hit in "Each and Every One." Everything But the Girl released six studio records from 1984 to 1992, ranging from the Smiths-inspired indie pop of Love Not Money (1985) to the heavily orchestrated '60s-style melodrama Baby, the Stars Shine Bright (1986). Their steady stream of music was interrupted in 1992, when Watt was brought close to death by a rare disease. Although their label had dropped them, the duo returned from their enforced hiatus with a new outlook. Thorn collaborated with Massive Attack on their 1994 single "Protection," which became an electronic dance music favorite. Everything But the Girl's 1994 effort, Amplified Heart, was on its surface another smooth jazz-pop record, but the band had another trick up their sleeve. They gave the single "Missing" to electronic producer Todd Terry, whose inventive drum'n'bass remix became a worldwide dance floor hit. The single was on the Billboard Hot 100 for 55 weeks (a record at the time) and made it into Top 10 charts around the world. On 1996's Walking Wounded, Everything But the Girl embraced their new fans and released a record of soulful chill-out electronica with a helping of dance friendly tracks. The album became the duo's highest charting to date thanks to the hit singles "Walking Wounded" and "Wrong." Temperamental (1999), another electronica-infused album, followed, but Thorn--anxious to take a break from touring and recording and start a family--chose to retire in 2000. While Watt started a new career as an EDM producer and DJ, Thorn raised the couple's children, twin daughters and a son. In 2006, Thorn returned to the studio to record her second solo album, an electronic dance record called Out of the Woods (2007). It was followed by the quieter Love and its Opposite (2010), and the Christmas-themed Tinsel and Lights (2012), both released in conjunction with her husband's label Strange Feeling. In 2013, Thorn published her first book, a memoir entitled Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to Be a Pop Star. An engaging account of her life, the book received critical accolades and was a Sunday Times top-ten bestseller. Following its success, Thorn became a regular columnist for London's New Statesman newspaper and began working on her second book, a study of singing called Naked at the Albert Hall (2015). Thorn released her first album of original material in eight years, Record, in March 2018 to widespread acclaim for its emotional lyrics and feminist themes.