Tracey Thorn's playlist

Behind the scenes

The soundtrack to Bedsit Disco Queen

Tracey Thorn was one half of internationally successful group Everything But the Girl and collaborated with Paul Weller, Massive Attack and dance legend Todd Terry. Her memoir Bedsit Disco Queen is the superb story of her 30 year pop career. Tracey has picked five videos that span this illustrious career from the all-girl band Marine Girls to Everything But the Girl and finally to her work as a solo artist. Here she treats us to some rather marvellous ‘behind-the-scenes’ facts…

Marine Girls - A Place In The Sun

The video was filmed in Brighton. I see that my hair looks quite BIG here and this is because although the rest of the band went down to Brighton on the train, I got a lift in the director's open top sports car. Ahem.

Fun Fact no 1 : This is the only time in my life I have been on a fairground ride as scary as that one. I look terrified and angry with the director because, frankly, I am.

Fun Fact no 2 : The boy in the video is our friend Tim, who played saxophone with us occasionally, although not on this song, so why he's in the video, God only knows.

Everything But The Girl - Each and Every One

I'm dancing like a young Boy George in this video, which is sweet. You'll notice I don't look at the camera once. I think my theory here is that if I can't see IT, it can't see ME, and hopefully it might go away.

Everything But The Girl - The Only Living Boy in New York

The silent lip sync video. Singing without singing. Directed by Hal Hartley. The extras in this look AMAZING, they are my favourites.

Everything But The Girl - Missing

We'd both lost a lot of weight, Ben because he'd been seriously ill, me because I'd been seriously anxious. It makes the video a bit hard to watch now, I think. And yet it's the video for our biggest ever hit single. Seriously unglamorous, it must shock a lot of people when they see it for the first time.

Tracey Thorn - It's All True

This was the first video I'd made in seven years, so it was quite a big deal.
I'm singing the song but I'm too far away for you to be able to see. In retrospect, I think it would be better if I was doing the dance routine along with everyone. Yes, it would have taken me a year to learn it, which would have delayed release, but still.

Virago

Bedsit Disco Queen

By Tracey Thorn

The Sunday Times top ten bestselling memoir of Tracey Thorn's 30-year pop career with Marine Girls and Everything But The Girl, and her collaborations with Paul Weller, Massive Attack and Todd Terry. A Radio 4 Book of the Week in March 2013.I was only sixteen when I bought an electric guitar and joined a band. A year later, I formed an all-girl band called the Marine Girls and played gigs, and signed to an indie label, and started releasing records.

Then, for eighteen years, between 1982 and 2000, I was one half of the group Everything But the Girl. In that time, we released nine albums and sold nine million records. We went on countless tours, had hit singles and flop singles, were reviewed and interviewed to within an inch of our lives. I've been in the charts, out of them, back in. I've seen myself described as an indie darling, a middle-of-the-road nobody and a disco diva. I haven't always fitted in, you see, and that's made me face up to the realities of a pop career - there are thrills and wonders to be experienced, yes, but also moments of doubt, mistakes, violent lifestyle changes from luxury to squalor and back again, sometimes within minutes.The Alan Bennett of pop memoirists. I loved her book so much I wanted to form a band, too. Preferably with Thorn.As distinctive and lovely as its author's singing voice, Bedsit Disco Queen isn't just a wry and wise memoir of a unique career: it acts as a kind of eulogy for a forgotten era of British pop.A corker of a read: fascinating, compelling and beautifully written.An intensely readable account of thirty years of being in love with music ... Most would recognise her voice, with its rich blend of melancholy and yearning. Her written voice is similarly distinctive: warm, assertive, sweetly funny, but most of all honest.As a witty and wise chronicle of a life spent dipping in and out of the limelight, this is second to none.Tracey Thorn was singer and songwriter with Everything But the Girl from 1982-2000. At that point she semi-retired from the music business to bring up her children. She has since recorded three solo albums, Out of the Woods, Love and Its Opposite, and Tinsel and Lights. She lives in London with her husband Ben Watt and their three children.A Sunday Times top ten non-fiction bestseller!Radio 4 Book of the Week in March 2013, read by Tracey Thorn.Tracey Thorn is a much-loved artist with a devoted fanbase: Everything But the Girl had numerous hits and sold 9 million records; her solo albums sold 50,000 without even touring.A frank and funny pop culture memoir in the vein of Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman (BookScan: 222,000) - this is 'how to be a woman artist'.