Everything But The Girl
Everything But The Girl
Pop duo
Influenced Chart-Topping Bands
In the decade that vocalist Tracey Thorn and guitarist/keyboardist Ben Watt have been writing and recording music together as Everything But The Girl (EBTG), they have watched their jazz-influenced pop style go from unfashionable to trendy. Although several music writers have credited EBTG with parenting the trend, the duo has nevertheless remained at the periphery of success. Their names are known in their native England, where they enjoyed initial popularity with college crowds, but they’ve mustered only a cult following in the United States, again mostly among college students. Writing in Seventeen almost a decade after their first collaboration, Wif Stenger summarized EBTG’s non-rise to fame thus: “Their seductive, mellow sound, perfect for lazy, hazy afternoons or steamy summer nights, wasn’t exactly fashionable in 1981 (the start of the synth-pop craze). Oddly enough, it did catch on— although Ben and Tracey didn’t get famous for it.”
After working with two other women in a band called the Marine Girls in the early 1980s, Thorn was signed as a solo artist by independent label Cherry Red. She cut one album, A Distant Shore, for the label in 1982 before leaving London to begin university studies in Hull. During the same period, guitarist Ben Watt was also initiating his music career; he landed a gig at a club run by Mike Alway, who also produced records for Cherry Red. By 1982, Watt had released an EP called Summer into Winter on Cherry Red. Soon after, he also left for college in Hull. Alway recommended that Thorn and Watt look one another up; the result was Everything But The Girl.
Shared Penchant for Jazz
The two became friends immediately, even finding an apartment together soon after meeting. Some reporters have characterized their relationship as a romantic one, treating it as general knowledge, but neither Watt nor Thorn has confirmed the status of their private collaboration, leaving it persistently ambiguous. Their union as musical partners began somewhat experimentally, each writing songs that they would then work on together and each seeing collaboration as secondary to their solo work. They did, however, share strong interests, including a penchant for jazz and an unwillingness to produce music for the market.
They concentrated on writing jazz-influenced pop songs that were subdued and literary—not the popular musical fare of the early 1980s. When they did win attention from listeners, the notice came not for any of their own compositions, but for a cover of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.” Their rendition, recorded in January 1983 and released the following June, dovetailed with a burgeon
For the Record …
Members include Tracey Thorn (born September 26, 1962, in England; studied English at University of Hull), vocals, and Ben Watt (born December 6, 1962, in England; studied music at University of Hull), guitar, keyboards.
Band formed in Hull, England, c. 1982; released single “Night and Day,” Cherry Disc, 1983; released debut album, Eden, Blanco Y Negro, 1984.
Addresses: Record company —Atlantic Records, 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10019.
ing interest in a musical style referred to as “new jazz.” The single brought them to the notice of Paul Weller, an important figure in English rock from his work with the Jam and Style Council, who negotiated their first large exposure performance in London, in early January 1983. Melody Maker’s Ian Pye described the stage style that would become characteristic of the duo: “Armed with acoustic guitars and their own quiet determination, they won the audience over through the simple yet endearing quality of a delicately sketched performance.”
Despite the positive response prompted by their performance and single, both Watt and Thorn still viewed their solo careers as their main work. They did reveal, however, that as a duo they were receiving calls from major labels in London and Los Angeles. They responded tentatively at the time, ultimately passing over big-label sponsorship for the freedom to shape their own direction gradually. They switched labels only when they became frustrated with Cherry Red, and their original producer, Mike Alway, decided to start his own label, Blanco Y Negro. EBTG followed Alway in the spring of 1983 and became official clients in April 1984; the deal offered EBTG the artistic freedom of an independent label and the distribution of a major label, since Blanco Y Negro operated as a subsidiary of Warner Bros.
Despite the security of their new professional home, some label confusion followed during and after the transition from Cherry Red to Blanco Y Negro. By the time Watt had produced his full-length solo album, North Marine Drive, for Cherry Red in 1983, the duo had recorded the material for their joint debut album. But the release of that record, Eden, was held up until the summer of 1984, by which time the band had moved to Blanco Y Negro. Despite its scrambled origin, reviewers and listeners greeted Eden with warmth, pushing it to the Number 14 spot on the U.K. charts. Paul Strange, writing for Melody Maker in May 1984, called it “a haunting, mellow, passionate and highly addictive debut album.” The success of the album and its lead single, “Each and Every One,” brought Thorn and Watt an offer to perform on BBC-TV; they had to turn it down, however, in order to take their university exams.
Influenced Chart-Topping Bands
Although EBTG grew as a name in English popular music, Eden would be the last moment of an uncomplicated relationship with the English music press; reviewers and interviewers quickly became critical and sometimes harsh, often dismissing the duo’s relaxed, jazzy sound and intellectually deliberate lyrics. In 1986 Thorn and Watt explained to Melody Maker interviewer Sorrell Downer their impression of the conflict they experienced with English reviewers. Thorn told Downer that the “records were being reviewed by people a lot older then us, … but so many people who listened to it were our age, and to them it was just fab and meant an enormous amount.” Thorn also discussed the response that her withdrawn and vulnerable manner had earned from music writers, reporting, “Every time I get on stage, they bring out the knife and start running up and down screaming ‘Why isn’t she more tough?’” She attributed much of the trouble, paradoxically, to her outspoken feminism, explaining, “because I’m one of so few female vocalists that will stand up and say I’m a feminist,’ write songs about women, and talk about my lyrics in a feminist way.”
Despite criticism, these elements found a steady following with English youth, particularly of university background, and became a significant influence among bands that would achieve chart-topping sales and enormous popularity within a decade, actually turning the EBTG sound into an important force in the music industry. At the time their work prompted comparisons to the style of sultry singer Sade.
In 1985 Jimmy Guterman gave the band’s second album, Love Not Money, a favorable and optimistic review in Rolling Stone, demonstrating the general division between American and British reviewers. Similarly, when Sire (another Warner Bros, division) released Eden in the United States as Everything But The Girl in 1984, Roy Trakin greeted it with approval in Creem. He credited the pair with “carving out a brand-new musical category…: post-post-punk cocktail jazz.” Like most reviewers, he focused on Thorn’s voice, claiming that her “husky, tobacco-filled vocals soothe on the outside, but reward more than casual listening, too.”
Drifting in Limbo
Baby, the Stars Shine Bright, released in 1986, exchanged Watt’s previously spare arrangement for the lush accompaniment of a full orchestra. A Melody Maker review noted what appeared to be the duo’s popular position at the moment, balanced between “their status as marginal indie-pop cuties” and “a wider acceptance,” noting in particular attention from the United States. But two years later, Melody Maker reviewer David Stubbs described the band as in exactly the same place they had been at the beginning of their career; in the wake of the 1988 release of Idlewild, he noted that the duo “persisted and drifted into a limbo between heaven and hell” from which there seemed to be no escape, remarking, “They have painted themselves into this corner of dumb comparisons and painted thus in soft pastels with a limited repertoire of permutations and options.” Nonetheless, Idlewild held on in the Top Twenty from March through August of that year.
The Language of Life, released in 1990 on Atlantic Records and recorded in Los Angeles, landed EBTG in the pages of many American magazines, including Seventeen, Rolling Stone, Stereo Review, and Spin. The album made it onto the American pop charts with a push from the single “Driving,” which won regular radio airplay and video rotation on cable network VH-1. Rachel Pepper later noted in Deneuve EBTG’s “recently gained widespread American musical attention,” referring to the effect of Language and the 1991 follow-up Worldwide. In fact, it was generally acknowledged in the music industry that the duo was finally poised to break out of their cult vacuum with the American public. Thorn and Watt next produced an acoustic album, Acoustic, that recalled many previous recordings.
At that critical moment, Watt fell prey to Churg Strauss syndrome, an often fatal illness that kept him in the hospital for most of 1992. Looking back in a 1994Billboard article, Jon Cummings argued that the illness “derailed much of the momentum that [Watt] and Thorn had gained at American radio.” EBTG had been scheduled for a major tour of the States that year in order to maintain the excitement generated by Language and to promote both Worldwide and Acoustic. Consequently, when the illness gave way, Watt and Thorn found themselves starting practically from scratch with American listeners.
Miraculously, Amplified Heart easily repeated the success of Language, winning unusually broad notice, as well as praise. Stephen Holden hailed it in the New York Times as “possibly their best,” and Karen Schoemer claimed in Newsweek that Amplified Heart found “the perfect balance of folky simplicity and understated technology.” It was this balance, she felt, that made the disc “the most beautifully mature album of their career,” as well as “one of the sleeper gems of 1994.”
Selected discography
Eden (includes “Each and Every One”), Blanco Y Negro, 1984, released in U.S. as Everything But The Girl, Sire, 1984.
Love Not Money, Blanco Y Negro/Sire, 1985.
Baby, the Stars Shine Bright, Blanco Y Negro/Sire, 1986.
Idlewild, Blanco Y Negro/Sire, 1988.
Language of Life (includes “Driving”), Blanco Y Negro/Atlantic, 1990.
Worldwide, Blanco Y Negro/Atlantic, 1991.
Acoustic, Blanco Y Negro/Atlantic, 1992.
Amplified Heart, Atlantic, 1994.
Sources
Billboard, June 11, 1994.
Creem, April 1985.
Deneuve, April 1993.
Entertainment Weekly, July 29, 1994.
Melody Maker, April 24, 1982; September 4, 1982; January 15, 1983; January 29, 1983; May 19, 1984; June 2, 1984; August 30, 1986; March 5, 1988; February 10, 1990; September 28, 1991.
Newsweek, September 5, 1994.
New York Times, September 9, 1994.
Rolling Stone, August 15, 1985; July 12, 1990.
Seventeen, July 1990.
Spin, March 1990.
Stereo Review, June 1990.
Stereopiay, December 1991.
—Ondine E. Le Blanc
Everything But The Girl
Everything But The Girl
Electronica duo
In the two decades that Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt have been writing and recording music together as Everything But The Girl (EBTG), their style has changed from jazz-influenced pop to beat-driven electronica, keeping the duo ahead of the times and relentlessly relevant. Although several music writers have credited EBTG with parenting the jazz-pop trend, the duo nevertheless remained at the periphery of success during the 1980s and early 1990s. Their names were known in their native England, where they enjoyed initial popularity with college crowds, but they mustered only a cult following in the United States, again mostly among college students. Popular success came after a remixed dance version of “Missing” became first a club favorite, and then a worldwide hit. EBTG’s following albums moved further and further in an electronic- and dance-oriented direction.
After working with two other women in a band called the Marine Girls in the early 1980s, Thorn was signed as a solo artist by independent label Cherry Red. She cut one album, A Distant Shore, for the label in 1982 before leaving London to begin university studies in Hull. During the same period, guitarist Ben Watt was also initiating his music career; he landed a gig at a club run by Mike Alway, who also produced records for
For the Record…
Members include Tracey Thorn (born on September 26, 1962, in England. Education: Master’s degree in literature from University of Hull), vocals; Ben Watt ((born on December 6, 1962, in England. Education: degree in music from University of Hull), instrumentalist, DJ; couple has three children.
Band formed in Hull, England, c. 1982; released single “Night and Day,” Cherry Disc, 1983; released debut album, Eden, on Blanco Y Negro, 1984; released seven albums, late 1980s-early 1990s; remixed version of “Missing” sparked a change in musical direction to elec-tronica, 1995; released Walking Wounded, 1996; released Tempermental, 1999.
Addresses: Record company —Atlantic Records, 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10019. Website— Everything But The Girl Official Website: http://www.ebtg.com.
Cherry Red. By 1982 Watt had released an EP called Summer into Winteron Cherry Red. Soon after, he also left for college in Hull. Alway recommended that Thorn and Watt look one another up; the result was Everything But The Girl.
The two became friends immediately, beginning a relationship that would survive many obstacles and grow stronger after each one. Their union as musical partners began somewhat experimentally, each writing songs that they would then work on together and each seeing collaboration as secondary to their solo work. They did, however, share strong interests, including a penchant for jazz and an unwillingness to produce music for the market.
They concentrated on writing jazz-influenced pop songs that were subdued and literary—not the popular musical fare of the early 1980s. When they did win attention from listeners, the notice came not for any of their own compositions, but for a cover of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.” Their rendition, recorded in January of 1983 and released the following June, dovetailed with a burgeoning interest in a musical style referred to as “new jazz.” The single brought them to the notice of Paul Weller, an important figure in English rock from his work with the Jam and Style Council, who negotiated their first large-exposure performance in London, in early January of 1983. Melody Maker’s Ian Pye described the stage style that would become characteristic of the duo: “Armed with acoustic guitars and their own quiet determination, they won the audience over through the simple yet endearing quality of a delicately sketched performance.”
Signed with Blanco Y Negro
Despite the positive response prompted by their performance and single, both Watt and Thorn still viewed their solo careers as their main work. They did reveal, however, that as a duo they were receiving calls from major labels in London and Los Angeles. They responded tentatively at the time, ultimately passing over big-label sponsorship for the freedom to shape their own direction gradually. They switched labels only when they became frustrated with Cherry Red, and their original producer, Mike Alway, decided to start his own label, Blanco Y Negro. EBTG followed Alway in the spring of 1983 and became official clients in April of 1984; the deal offered EBTG the artistic freedom of an independent label and the distribution of a major label, since Blanco Y Negro operated as a subsidiary of Warner Bros.
Despite the security of their new professional home, some label confusion followed during and after the transition from Cherry Red to Blanco Y Negro. By the time Watt had produced his full-length solo album, North Marine Drive, for Cherry Red in 1983, the duo had recorded the material for their joint debut album. But the release of that record, Eden, was held up until the summer of 1984, by which time the band had moved to Blanco Y Negro. Despite its scrambled origin, reviewers and listeners greeted Eden with warmth, pushing it to the number 14 spot on the United Kingdom charts. Paul Strange, writing for Melody Maker in May of 1984, called it “a haunting, mellow, passionate and highly addictive debut album.” The success of the album and its lead single, “Each and Every One,” brought Thorn and Watt an offer to perform on BBC-TV; they had to turn it down, however, in order to take their university exams.
Although EBTG grew as a name in English popular music, Eden would be the last moment of an uncomplicated relationship with the English music press; reviewers and interviewers quickly became critical and sometimes harsh, often dismissing the duo’s relaxed, jazzy sound and intellectually deliberate lyrics. In 1986 Thorn and Watt explained to Melody Maker interviewer Sorrell Downer their impression of the conflict they experienced with English reviewers. Thorn told Downer that the “records were being reviewed by people a lot older then us, … but so many people who listened to it were our age, and to them it was just fab and meant an enormous amount.”
In 1985 Jimmy Guterman gave the band’s second album, Love Not Money, a favorable and optimistic review in Rolling Stone, demonstrating the general division between American and British reviewers. Similarly, when Sire (another Warner Bros, division) released Eden in the United States as Everything But The Girl in 1984, Roy Trakin greeted it with approval in Creem. He credited the pair with “carving out a brand-new musical category …: post-post-punk cocktail jazz.” Like most reviewers, he focused on Thorn’s voice, claiming that her “husky, tobacco-filled vocals soothe on the outside, but reward more than casual listening, too.”
Baby, the Stars Shine Bright, released in 1986, exchanged Watt’s previously spare arrangement for the lush accompaniment of a full orchestra. A Melody Maker review noted what appeared to be the duo’s popular position at the moment, balanced between “their status as marginal indie-pop cuties” and “a wider acceptance,” noting in particular attention from the United States. The Language of Life, released in 1990 on Atlantic Records and recorded in Los Angeles, landed EBTG in the pages of many American magazines, including Seventeen, Rolling Stone, Stereo Review, and Spin. The album made it onto the American pop charts with a push from the single “Driving,” which won regular radio airplay and video rotation on cable network VH1. It was generally acknowledged in the music industry that the duo was finally poised to break out of their cult vacuum with the American public. Thorn and Watt next produced an acoustic album, Acoustic, that recalled many previous recordings.
At that critical moment, Watt fell prey to Churg Strauss syndrome, an often fatal illness that kept him in the hospital for most of 1992. The illness left him almost 50 pounds lighter, with less than 20 percent of his small intestine remaining. His illness is painstakingly detailed in a memoir, Patient: The True Story of a Rare Illness, published in 1997. Watt will likely remain gaunt for the rest of his life, as he has to adhere to a strict dietary regime. When the illness finally gave way in 1993, Watt and Thorn found themselves starting practically from scratch with American listeners.
Miraculously, Amplified Heart easily repeated the success of Language, winning unusually broad notice, as well as praise. Stephen Holden hailed it in the New York Times as “possibly their best,” and Karen Schoemer claimed in Newsweek that Amplified Heart found “the perfect balance of folky simplicity and understated technology.” It was this balance, she felt, that made the disc “the most beautifully mature album of their career,” as well as “one of the sleeper gems of 1994.”
Major Turning Point
That year proved to be a major turning point in the group’s history. The transition from their pop roots to their electronic future began when British trip-hop group Massive Attack contacted Thorn to contribute vocals to their upcoming album Protection. It took off, though, when “Missing,” a song off Amplified Heart, was remixed by Todd “the God” Terry. The dance version of the track broke first in Miami and Italy, then took the rest of the world by storm. Thorn remarked on the grassroots success of “Missing” in Interview,“’Missing’ is a success on very primitive terms. People heard it in clubs and asked to hear it again.”
Their next album, the universally praised Walking Wounded, continued on the track they started down with “Missing.” An Entertainment Weekly reviewer remarked, “Walking Wounded floats Thorn’s wan vocals over a soundscape of sputtering, hissing, and clacking beats…. Watt’s production lets all these sounds sparkle in air, creating a dizzying 3-D effect.” Thorn tied their new musical output with their new outlook on life.“The illness gave us permission to do something different, because we emerged from it as totally different people,” she told the Spanish-language magazine Vanidad.
Three years passed between Walking Wounded and the release of EBTG’s next album, Tempermental. Watt spent the time honing his DJ and production skills, beginning Lazy Dog, a long-lasting bi-weekly residence at the Notting Hill Arts Club. Tempermental found them even deeper into clubland. Walking Wounded had been balanced out with songs like “Mirrorball,” which appealed to fans of their original sound, but Tempermental was full-fledged electronica. The album proved a critical favorite. Evelyn McDonnell remarked in Interview,“EBTG is now doing for club music what they did for sophisticated pop: piercing the heart of the matter. On … Tempermental, they’re taking the groove a step further, finding emotional dimensions in the after-hours sound.”
Thorn and Watt have been a couple since the early days of EBTG and have three children that they raise together in London. Thorn remarked in Interview, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we remain together forever. We’re devoted to that idea and derive strength from it as a couple.” However, even after 20 years and despite their deep devotion to one another, they have no plans to marry. Watt told People, “There’s a teenage thing that binds us together… the idea that we’re still getting away with life. I still feel 19 in my head. I didn’t want to get married then, and I feel the same way now.”
Other Pursuits
EBTG took a break from writing new material after Tempermental was released. Thorn withdrew from the music scene to raise their children, occasionally contributing vocals to various projects. Watt opened a club/bar, Cherry Jam, in West London in 2002 and continues to spin at the Notting Hill Art Club. The club, a small, out-of-the-way venue under a store front on Notting Hill, provides Watt with a way to hone his skills and remain on the cutting edge of the musical front. He remarked to VH1.com, “With dance music, the DJ/ production side of it isn’t at all ageist. You don’t have to be a pretty boy, you don’t have to be in a boy band, you don’t have to be on the cover of all the magazines to survive. You can age gracefully and still maintain an edge to what you’re doing, and that appeals to me ‘cause, well, I’m certainly not getting any younger.” The hundreds of people that flock to the small club every other week are a testament to Watt’s continuing popularity and cultural relevance. Back to Mine, a CD/DVD release of hits and B-sides chosen by Watt and Thorn was released in 2001. Still, he and Thorn are not through with EBTG. “We want to make sure that when we do come back that it’s with something different,” he told Burn it Blue online. “It doesn’t matter how long the gap is, if you come back with a killer record, it will work.”
Selected discography
Eden, Blanco Y Negro, 1984; released in U.S. as Everything But The Girl, Sire, 1984.
Love Not Money, Blanco Y Negro/Sire, 1985.
Baby, the Stars Shine Bright, Blanco Y Negro/Sire, 1986.
Idlewild, Blanco Y Negro/Sire, 1988.
Language of Life, Blanco Y Negro/Atlantic, 1990.
Worldwide, Blanco Y Negro/Atlantic, 1991.
Acoustic, Blanco Y Negro/Atlantic, 1992.
Amplified Heart, Atlantic, 1994.
Walking Wounded, Atlantic, 1996.
Tempermental, Atlantic, 1999.
Back to Mine, Ultra, 2001.
Sources
Periodicals
Billboard, June 11, 1994; August 28, 1999.
Creem, April 1985.
Entertainment Weekly, July 29, 1994; May 24, 1996.
Interview, April 1996; March 1997; November 1999.
Melody Maker, April 24, 1982; September 4, 1982; January 15, 1983; January 29, 1983; May 19, 1984; June 2, 1984; August 30, 1986; March 5, 1988; February 10, 1990; September 28, 1991.
Newsweek, September 5, 1994.
New York Times, September 9, 1994.
People, June 24, 1996.
Rolling Stone, August 15, 1985; July 12, 1990.
Seventeen, July 1990.
Spin, March 1990.
Stereo Review, June 1990.
Stereoplay, December 1991.
Vanidad, October 1996.
Online
“Ben Watt,” Burn it Blue, http://www.burntblue.com/features/feature.asp?Feature=143 (December 30, 2002).
Everything But The Girl Official Website, http://www.ebtg.com (December 30, 2002).
“Everything But The Girl: Pop Hitmakers Make Dance Move,” Dotmusic.com, http://www.dotmusic.com/interviews/March1996/interviews9815.asp (December 30, 2002).
“Everything But The Girl’s Ben Watt Finds Fountain of Youth,” VH1.com, http://www.vh1.com/artists/news/1443851/05182001/everything_but_the_girl.jhtml (December 30, 2002).
—Ondine E. LeBlanc
Everything but the Girl
EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL
Formed: 1982, Hull, England
Members: Tracey Thorn, vocals (born Hertfordshire, England, 26 September 1962); Ben Watt, backing vocals, synthesizers, guitars, all instrumentation (born London, England, 6 December 1962).
Genre: Rock
Best-selling album since 1990: Amplified Heart (1994)
Hit songs since 1990: "Driving," "Missing," "Wrong"
In the early 1990s, the jazz-influenced pop band Everything but the Girl had a small, devoted following, even though the duo's music verged on the easy-listening genre. In the mid-1990s, with the release of Amplified Heart (1994), they crossed over into the mainstream with a carefully constructed mix of acoustic elements and electronic flourishes. With Tracey Thorn as the duo's warm, honeyed vocalist and Ben Watt as the mixing and arranging master, Amplified Heart sold more than half a million copies within two years of its release in the United States.
Watt and Thorn began performing together after they met as students at Hull University. In 1984 they signed to Blanco y Negro, a label started by Mike Alway, a friend of Watt's who had produced solo albums for the duo in the early 1980s. The pair released a single, "Each and Everyone," which reached the top thirty in the U.K. Many reporters characterized their collaboration as not only musical but romantic, and though they initially tried to keep the arrangement ambiguous, they eventually revealed their romantic relationship.
After a few releases of jazz-inflected pop (Eden, The Language of Life, Worldwide ), Thorn began lending vocals to the U.K. trip-hop band Massive Attack, and Watt became more heavily involved in deejaying in London dance clubs. Unsurprisingly, the band's 1994 album Amplified Heart began to show evidence of their movement toward electronic music yet remained firmly rooted in strong songwriting. The album's unexpected hit "Missing" hit the charts after Todd Terry remixed it, adding muscular backbeats to what became a top-five hit in Britain and the United States and number one on the Billboard dance chart. With its forlorn, pining refrain "And I miss you / Like the deserts miss the rain," the song could be heard on dance floors across the United States and Europe.
Amplified Heart is a landmark album for Everything but the Girl, remarkable because it was recorded after Watt's near-death battle with Churg-Strauss syndrome in 1992 (as recounted in his critically acclaimed book Patient ). Amplified Heart is a personal chronicle of the ups and downs in a romantic relationship, a hopeful testament to love's ability to help people cope through adversity.
Two years later the band released Walking Wounded, which found them tinkering further with electronic programming and drum and bass noises, though Thorn's warm vocals prevents it from veering off into a cold, detached direction. The album sold more than 1 million copies in the U.K. In 1999 their ninth release, Temperamental, found the band knee-deep in electronic music with an after-hours, jazz-lounge vibe. Temperamental shows how the band has honed its sound, undergirding the synthetic patina of electronic music with solid songwriting skills.
SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:
The Language of Life (Atlantic, 1990); Amplified Heart (Atlantic, 1994); Walking Wounded (Virgin, 1996); Temperamental (Atlantic, 1999); Back to Mine (Ultra, 2001); Like the Deserts Miss the Rain: A Retrospective (Rhino, 2003).
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
B. Watt, Patient: The True Story of a Rare Illness (New York, 1997).
carrie havranek