Everything But the Girl

The duo of Everything But the Girl is composed of Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt. EBTG has a long history (going back to the early 1980s), and for most of that history I paid no attention to them. I think it was because I thought their name was stupid--why were they calling themselves "Everything But the Girl" when there was obviously a girl in the band?

Then, while driving, I heard the song "Hatfield 1980" from the 1999 album Temperamental. I was so struck by the song (a dub-influenced downtempo track with a gripping beat and haunting lyrics) that, in order to listen to the end, I stayed in my car several minutes after reaching my destination.

It turned out that without knowing, I'd already heard the vocals of Tracey Thorn in such Massive Attack songs as "Protection." Further intrigued, I bought an EBTG best-of album and began to look into the EBTG back catalog. I discovered a band that seemed to be ahead of its time; for example, with "Before Today" and other songs from the 1996 album Walking Wounded, EBTG seemed to be anticipating what is currently called "intelligent drum'n'bass."

Official Everything But the Girl site - Everything but the navigation strategy, it seems. The main page leads to a mostly text-filled page that describes the site's rationale but does little to help the user figure out where to click next. A much more user-friendly starting point is the page named "Front of House Pass."

Lazy Dog - Site for Ben Watt's side project as a DJ.

This page created May 2001 - Last modified May 8, 2001