Shoot Me Down (2012 Remaster)

 

Provided to YouTube by Chrysalis Records Ltd. Shoot Me Down (2012 Remaster) · Everything But The Girl Love Not Money ℗ Buzzin’ Fly Records Limited under exclusive license to Chrysalis Recordings Released on: 1985-04-15 Auto-generated by YouTube.

 

This footage was shot almost forty years ago in late 1983 by Tracey’s old friend Huw Davies, a photographer and film maker, now turned academic. He turned up with his 16mm camera and filmed us in Hull and London. The soundtrack is Each and Every One from our debut album Eden, which we’d recorded just before this footage was shot.

You can see Tracey walking through King’s Cross station and getting on an Intercity 125 up to Hull. Meanwhile up in Hull Ben wanders around the docks, before walking down Salisbury Street and arriving at the flat where we lived at the time. Our handwritten names are underneath our doorbell, with an image of a trumpet.

We hadn’t seen any of it in decades. We contacted Huw in late 2022 and he very kindly rummaged around in his garage and found the reels and then digitised the original footage and sent it to us. Viewing it again was like opening up a time capsule. The clothes, the haircuts. Those cars driving round King’s Cross. That train.

Here is more from the Huw Davies film of 1983, this time cut to a soundtrack of Tender Blue. We are being driven in a taxi through London, heading to Power Plant Studios in Willesden, where we recorded both Eden and Love Not Money. Arriving at the studio, we make our way inside, Ben with a cigarette glued between his lips, Tracey spiky-haired and skinny. In the control room, Tracey sits and chats with Robin Millar, who produced those first two records, and then Robin comes and messes around at the piano with Ben. We are only 21 years old in this footage. Still students at university. We had already recorded Eden, though it hadn’t yet been released. Tender Blue seemed to provide the perfect soundtrack, and as the car speeds through the dark at the beginning, you could almost imagine you were watching some 1950s jazz documentary. There is a timeless quality to it all – to us, it feels both a hundred years ago and like it all happened yesterday.

Everything but the Girl Love not Money CD cover
The soundtrack for my 80s period was experienced in the 1980s, from 10th grade through senior year. Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt of Everything but the Girl.

This track alone is good enough to summarize the inner struggle of late adolescence. Suppose this is your first go; welcome to my British UK youth. Does anyone remember the first time you put this CD or cassette tape on? Incredible! Ben Watt’s thumping baseline and Tracey’s sultry vocal cut right to the core of you. No one today is close to this. Try it on for yourself. It should fit you like a hand-me-down Mod sweater from your old brother, Pablo. One may find considerable data on ETBTG and Tracey and Ben on Wiki and throughout the music press online.  Today we know many of our readers enjoy making connections between the artists we cover, so how many degrees of separation between Paul Weller and Tracey Thorn? Answer: The Style Council: In the 1980s, Thorn contributed guest vocals and backing vocals for The Style Council on the track “The Paris Match” (from the album Café Bleu)

New Music Friday, April 21, 2023, brings us a new release from Ben Watts and Tracey Thorne. Now the first new album from Everything But the Girl in nearly a quarter century, Remember this is the first new album by EBTG, yet we have enjoyed solo albums by both members since the last official group release.
 
 
Hush your mouth now, honey mineHave you been waiting all this timeTo so loudly disagreeKick the feet from under meDid you come here to shoot me downBury my on my own home ground

Hold your tongue now Mother mineFor you’ve held it all this timeAnd now’s no time to shout and swearThat you despise the things I care aboutFor your territoryWill always be miles and miles from me
Stop my mouth with kisses dearFor ever they will keep me hereAnd these drunken blasphemiesMust never make us enemiesFor we’ll have to meet once moreSober and as strongly BOUND as before

Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt at BBC6

We have EBTG on top of our minds as It is their first studio album in almost 24 years following Temperamental (1999)

FUSE

Paul Langan

 

Interior Space · Everything But The Girl Fuse ℗ 2023 Buzzin’ Fly Records, under exclusive license to Virgin Music Group Released on: 2023-04-21 Producer, Associated Performer, Drum, Piano, Recording Arranger, Synthesizer Programming, Electric Guitar, Background Vocalist, Programmer: Ben Watt Studio Personnel, Recording Engineer, Mixer, Programmer: Bruno Ellingham Studio Personnel, Mastering Engineer: Miles Showell Producer, Associated Performer, Vocals, Background Vocalist, Recording Arranger: Tracey Thorn Composer Lyricist: Ben Watt Composer Lyricist: Tracey Thorn Auto-generated by YouTube.

Everything but the Girl perform Run a Red Light live for BBC Radio 6 Music.

Dec 1, 2022
• Released exclusively as a B-side on the CD single of “Old Friends” (1991)

• Tracey Thorn – Vocals
• Ben Watt – Guitar

• Recorded live in London in October 1990
• Live sound mixing is by Nick Atkins

• Published by Warner Bros. Music Ltd.

• Sleeve Design by The Senate

• Label: Blanco Y Negro (Cat. number NEG 51CD)
• ℗ & © 1991 Warner Music UK Ltd.

• “Back To The Old House” was written by The Smiths (Morrissey and Johnny Marr).
First appeared as a B side of “What Difference Does It Make?” (1984) and later that year an acoustic live version from the BBC Radio1 John Peel Show was featured on “Hatful Of Hollow” album.

2 days ago

I love this so so so much! The lyrics, the totally chilled-out beats. Contemporary yet nostalgic – almost unbearably so – and boy, you’ve made the tears fall!
It’s a happy cry though – a cry for the past, for my twenties and thirties (and forties), for the London days of the nineties and noughties, for what now seems a simpler, sweeter world. I know there’ll be load of folks out there who know EXACTLY what I mean. Thank you so much Tracey and Ben 🥰

Patrick Tate