Life, love and everything in between...
Tracey Thorn
Tracey Thorn, had a long and successful career with Everything But The Girl, the band she formed with her partner Ben Watt. Songs such as Each And Every One, Come On Home and I Don’t Want To Talk About It are as evocative of the Eighties as heyday Madonna or American poodle haired rockers.
However, the success of her most recent solo albums has proved to her that there is an audience who are still interested in her new music.
Of her latest album simply entitled Record, she says: ‘I cover a mixture of experiences that are auto-biographical and semi-autobiographical. I tried to make it very direct but hopefully it can be translated to reflect practically any woman’s life.’
The new release also recalls her experiences as a young adult and compares them with those of her twin girls, Jean and Alfie, as they leave their teenage years behind. They were the first children she had with Ben Watt. They also have a son Blake, who is 17.
‘My daughters have obviously grown up in a completely different kind of time to me. They have some of the same pressures that I had but there are many more that are new to them and their generation such as social media and the internet, of course,’ she says.
‘There are some aspects of their lives growing up that I’m quite envious of such as the connection they can have with the world at large. They’ve had access to a whole world of people, ideas and thoughts. If you think that you are the only teenager that feels a particular way, you can go online and find hundreds of others who feel exactly the same way.’
Tracey endured the usual feelings of awkwardness and alienation that most teenagers experience and on two songs, Queen and Guitar she tries to imagine how her life would have developed without music. ‘On the song Queen, I look back over my life and career and ask was all this always fated to happen?’ she says.
‘I was thinking about how I met Ben when I was so young and of course that kick-started my career. I think many people who have have achieved some success must think, “What if I hadn’t met that person or those people? Would I have ended up in another band, or even been a singer at all? Would I have ended up being a librarian?”
‘I wouldn’t have minded that the last scenario. I always had my nose stuck in a book.’
Guitar further examines these ‘what ifs’.
‘That is about when I bought my first electric guitar. I think I was about 16 at the time.
‘I knew a few boys who were in bands. There was a boy who taught me my first few chords. Like a lot of girls, I thought that boys in bands were the coolest thing.
‘The song is about me and my guitar and how it helped me find my form of self-expression.’
It was before she met Ben, the love of her life and no, the boy in question, she says, didn’t become a music legend.
The song Babies, she describes as ‘maybe the first pop song about contraception’. ‘I was recalling how terrifying the thought of being pregnant was, when I was a teenager,’ she says.
‘Millions of women like me can thank contraception for the joy of being able to have a baby when we wanted to have a baby and how I love being a mother now because of that freedom.’
Tracey is not planning any live shows to promote the album which is a pity but she says, she is never happier than when she is in the studio and live performances no longer plays to her strengths.
‘I have a certain freedom to do what I want at this stage.
‘I know who I will and won’t reach. I’m not banging my head on the wall shouting, “why am I not on the [BBC] Radio One play list?” I am realistic about what I hope to achieve and that is liberating.’
Tracey Thorn – Record is out now.
‘Like a lot of girls, I thought that boys in bands were the coolest thing’