Tracey Thorn

Tracey Thorn in 2009

Tracey Anne Thorn (born September 26, 1962) is an English singer, songwriter and writer. She is part of the musical duo Everything but the Girl.

Quotes

• “Never fancied him anyway,” I’d write when a boy dumped me. I’d leave out things that had gone wrong, or been difficult. I think it was partly an exercise in defiance, a refusal to be defeated by life’s adversities. So in that sense, my diary was a bit of a self-help manual, written by me, for me.
  • On reading past diaries in “Tracey Thorn: ‘I went through a phase of carrying Camus under my arm’” in The Guardian (2020 Jan 25)

• So often the story of rock’n’roll is told from a male perspective. So often it feels like men own music. And I still get as angry and frustrated about that as I ever did. Reading those women’s accounts of their lives has reminded me how much they paved the way back then. And history too often erases the women, in all art forms. Every single published story of a female artist goes a small way towards redressing the balance, and is another one saved from the fire.I didn’t try to be a soul singer, a jazz singer, a blues singer – no category…My music is my expression of what I feel and believe in a moment.
  • On women being excluded from music history in “Tracey Thorn: ‘I went through a phase of carrying Camus under my arm’” in The Guardian (2020 Jan 25)

• I feel very lucky to still feel like I’m full of ideas. I think sometimes being in the beginning or the middle of things is almost the best bit. This sounds terrible, because it sounds so ungrateful, but I’m never as excited by the aftermath of things: whether or not they are successful. It’s lovely if they are, obviously, but actually the really exciting bit is when it’s an idea in your head and you’re getting working on it.
  • On whether she feels creatively satisfied in “Tracey Thorn: ‘Not everything you do is cool’” in The Guardian (2020 Jan 27)

• It turned into a creature with a life of its own.There was nothing we were doing to make it happen. We couldn’t recreate it because we never really understood how it happened. People decided they were all going to play it, and you feel like it’s disconnected from you. All we could do was stand back and take the congratulations that came.
  • On the Everything but the Girl album Amplified Heart in “TRACEY THORN ON THE HIT FACTORY” in Interview Magazine (2010 May 13)