As Everything But the Girl, Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt were one of the most unique British acts of the 1980s and 1990s. None of their ten studio albums were quite alike in style or feel. Early on, this eclecticism was the result of the duo’s innate restlessness, but for a while it felt more like a struggle for artistic and commercial relevancy. By 1995, however, that struggle was resolved—by a remix.
That’s where The Best of Everything But the Girl begins—with house DJ Todd Terry’s reworking of “Missing”. Terry transformed the song from a gentle, windswept, mildly tropical indie track to a clattering, monolithic, four-on-the-floor house anthem that crucially, but only barely, retained the vulnerable longing of the original. It was a smash, hitting number one in multiple countries and the top three in the US and UK.
Despite its popularity, the single-minded dancefloor focus of the “Missing” remix actually sold Everything But the Girl short. Still, it provided them with the commercial security they’d never enjoyed, and, crucially, it served as a rallying point for the rest of the duo’s career. Clearly, Thorn and Watt, who curated The Best of Everything But the Girl, believe this period marked their apex, and they have sequenced the album accordingly. Unfortunately, this approach renders the collection with minimal purpose or context, other than to introduce a new product and give hardcore fans a chance to experience the inevitable remastered audio.
It’s really quite baffling that Thorn and Watt, meticulous as they are and seemingly now completely in control of their back catalog, would oversee something so incomplete. Even allowing for taste, this is not the best of Everything But the Girl. Nor is it a comprehensive career overview. It’s a greatest hits with some other songs that weren’t even singles. It’s a reverse-chronological rundown of the stylistic twists and turns that led Thorn and Watt to settle finally, but it’s not quite in reverse-chronological order, and it’s, erm, missing key components. Ultimately, it’s a jumble. The catch, which creates the frustration, is that much of this material is quite good indeed.
After “Missing”, The Best of Everything But The Girl is front-loaded with four tracks from Walking Wounded, the 1996 album that immediately followed the duo’s breakthrough. Indeed, Walking Wounded was one of their best. The house music focus is reprised on “Wrong” (here presented in a subsequent mash-up remix called “Tracey in My Room”), but Everything But the Girl expand their electronic palate into trip-hop on the sultry “Single” and skittering drum’n’bass on the cinematic title track and confessional “Before Today”.
These tracks show that, throughout changes in production and style, Thorn and Watt’s primary strengths were always their songwriting and their unique knack for capturing the inherent contradictions and fluctuations in relationships, with unflinching honesty and genuine tenderness, often couched in a knowing, affectionate sense of humor. Their music always rings true because it is: Thorn and Watt have been a couple for Everything But the Girl’s entire existence.
With a quarter of its material taken up by one album, the rest of The Best of Everything But the Girl naturally provides only a glimpse of everything else, and sometimes less. The duo’s early period, when they mixed cool jazz-pop with Smiths-adjacent indie rock, is sorely underrepresented. “Each and Every One” from debut Eden (1984) remains a classic that brilliantly disguises a kiss-off to the record industry as feminist defiance—and to a bossa nova groove, at that.
It meets up nicely with “Rollercoaster” a decade later, but a lot happened in between. It seems strange that fertile mid-1980s forays into kitchen-sink orchestral pop and gentle acoustic folk are given no more weight than the brief 1990s venture where Atlantic Records signed the duo and tried to turn them into squeaky-clean Adult Contemporary hitmakers, complete with the best session players money could buy.
Like most singer-songwriters, Thorn and Watt have made cover versions a significant part of their career, and a couple have provided them with their biggest UK hits. The ones here are a mixed bag. A straightforward yet sublime take on Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Only Living Boy in New York” is a natural showcase for Thorn and Watt’s rich harmonies and natural chemistry. Meanwhile, a drum’n’bass version of “Corcovado” is wholly unnecessary.
Finally, a pair of tracks from the oppressively bleak 2023 comeback album Fuse adds to the techno-heavy weighting of The Best of Everything But the Girl and also encapsulates the collection’s conundrum. They feel it necessary to wrap up the duo’s chronology, but it is redundant since it adds nothing new to their overall sonic trajectory.
Ultimately, that The Best of Everything But the Girl falls short is something of a compliment. Their catalog is so rich that no set of 16 songs could adequately cover it. Still, Home Movies (1993) and the previous The Best of Everything But the Girl (1996) have come closer. Pair one of those with Walking Wounded, and the essence of this special partnership becomes much clearer.