Spanning over forty years from their indie jazz-folk cult classic, Night and Day, to the acclaimed contemporary electronica of 2023’s Fuse, the 16-track capsule collection includes their biggest hits and deep evergreen cuts from a pioneering career.
"We always liked albums that had a fast side and a slow side," says Tracey of the compilation’s running order, "so we thought we’d start with the bangers and wind down with the ballads."
Upfront, the glimmering two-step of 2023’s Nothing Left To Lose sits among a clutch of 90s club-crossover hits - Todd Terry’s chart-topping remix of Missing, the dubby UK Top 10 breakbeat of Walking Wounded, and Tracey In My Room (Watt’s enduring dance-floor mash-up of EBTG’s Wrong and Soul Vision’s Come Into My Room).
"It also makes the album run backwards in time," says Ben. "It gives you a sense of clubland back to bedsit, a journey that to us feels very real. And at the end, we pair the modern-day (Run a Red Light) with how we started (Night and Day)."
Moving from success on London indie Cherry Red to Warner/Blanco Y Negro, the duo delivered a string of UK gold albums in the 1980s, exploring latin jazz (see Each and Every One), guitar pop, orchestral wall-of-sound (see Cross My Heart) and drum-machine soul - all showcasing Thorn’s unique voice, Watt’s arrangements and their shared songwriting. Their timeless cover of Danny Whitten’s I Don’t Want To Talk About It appeared in 1988 (#3, UK Top 40).
In the early 90s, after Watt's serious hospitalisation with a rare auto-immune disease, the pair returned unbowed with the uplifting Phil Ramone-produced The Only Living Boy In New York in 1993 and the million-selling ardent folktronica of the 1994 album, Amplified Heart (see Rollercoaster). It featured their biggest hit, Missing, after New York DJ-producer Todd Terry’s remix made the leap from heavy club spins to global pop radio playlists in 1995 (#2, US Hot 100; # 3, UK Top 40; #1, Germany, Italy, Canada).
Inspired, the duo followed it in 1996 with the sparkling Walking Wounded (#4 UK Album Chart, see Walking Wounded, Single, Before Today), a set of emotional future-facing songs brimming with ideas from the mid 90s electronic scene. Spawning four UK Top 40 hits, it became the pair’s first UK platinum album, going on to sell approaching 2 million copies worldwide. They followed it with Temperamental (see No Difference) in 1999, and after appearing at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2000, chose to hit the pause button.
After twenty years of accomplished solo careers and family life, the duo returned unexpectedly in 2023 with the widely-acclaimed studio album, Fuse. Sonically adventurous, it included the radio hit Nothing Left To Lose, took them to their highest ever album chart position (#3, UK Album Chart) and won them the Self-Producing Artist of the Year award at the MPG (Music Producer’s Guild) Awards 2024.
The Best of Everything But The Girl tracklist:
1) Missing (Todd Terry Remix)
2) Nothing Left To Lose
3) Tracey In My Room (Lazy Dog Bootleg Vocal Mix)
4) Walking Wounded
5) Single
6) Corcovado
7) Before Today
8) No Difference
9) Driving
10) Each And Every One
11) Rollercoaster
12) I Don’t Want To Talk About It
13) The Only Living Boy In New york
14) Cross My Heart
15) Run A Red Light
16) Night And Day
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