The first time Everything But the Girl reached the charts in the U.S., it was in 1990 with their fifth album The Language of Life and its first single “Driving.” When the English duo reappeared on the U.S. airwaves more than five years later with “Missing,” their sound had drastically changed. Yet their shift from a laid-back soul-jazz blend to the pulsating dance beats of “Missing” was not as abrupt as it may have appeared.
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To be sure, Todd Terry—the pioneering New York DJ—was critical to the change in Everything but the Girl’s sound and to the massive increase in their visibility and commercial success. The shift towards a more dance-oriented sound, which extended to the duo’s work after “Missing,” was catalyzed by Everything but the Girl’s Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt themselves. In fact, the transition really started in earnest shortly after the release of The Language of Life.
An Openness to Doing Remixes
The roots of Everything but the Girl’s emergence as a force on the dance charts can actually be traced to their earliest years. In a 2023 interview for Mixmag, Watt said he and Thorn “were always experimenting with putting the songs across in different ways,” particularly in live settings where they would do acoustic versions of their songs. Doing dance remixes was a natural extension of that process, as Watt added, “I think remixing as soon as it started to bubble up as an idea for us in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, we were very quick to embrace it as a way of being able to harness the song.”
The first Everything but the Girl hit to get the dance remix treatment was the second single from The Language of Life, “Take Me.” The duo known as Bristol Baseline Productions created the “Clifton Remix” of the song, the original version of which had spent nine weeks on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart. Watt told DJ Mag he liked the remix of “Take Me” and he “wanted to go down that route” with their 1994 album Amplified Heart, which included the original version of “Missing.”
“The Right Track at the Right Time”
Another catalyst for Thorn and Watt deciding to have “Missing” remixed was their experience of working on Massive Attack’s 1994 trip-hop classic Protection. Opening up to the idea of making their music more danceable, they sent “Missing” to several DJs for remixing. One of those was Terry, who was recommended to Thorn and Watt by an A&R executive at Atlantic Records. Terry’s remix would ultimately become Everything but the Girl’s biggest hit, but initially it got a cold reception from their UK label, the Warner Bros. subsidiary Blanco y Negro. Thorn and Watt were called into a meeting with label executives and told they were going to be dropped. As a last ditch effort to convince the label to keep them, they played the Terry remix of “Missing.” According to Watt, the response was “I don’t think it’s gonna work.”
Without the support of a label, it took the Terry remix of “Missing” several months to gain a following. Part of its allure was the blend of Thorn’s melancholy vocals with Terry’s propulsive beats, which was a novel combination at the time the track gained popularity. In his DJ Mag interview, Watt said, “Progressive house was burning out, and suddenly this track came along with a soulful vocal. I remember talking to quite a few DJs in the years afterwards who said they vividly remembered it sticking out as something that felt really fresh. We just got very lucky that it was the right track at the right time.”
The Impact of Todd Terry’s Remix of “Missing”
After the release of the album version of “Missing” completely whiffed on the Billboard charts, Terry’s remix made history on the Hot 100. It was Everything but the Girl’s first entry on that chart, and in spending 55 straight weeks there, it became the first song ever to spend at least one full year uninterrupted on the Hot 100. By the time it reached its peak position of No. 2, “Missing” had already spent 28 weeks on the chart. While it was blocked from the top spot by Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day,” “Missing” did spend four weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Dance Singles Sales chart.
The success of Terry’s remix of “Missing” played a substantial role in changing the course of Everything but the Girl’s future recordings. Over the five years that followed, the duo would place five songs on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart, four of which would peak at No. 1. They would also place four albums in the Top 10 of Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart, including their 2023 comeback album Fuse, which went to No. 3.
The ‘80s and early ‘90s fans of Everything but the Girl might have been surprised to see them establish themselves as makers of dance hits. As Watt noted, however, they were always open to reinterpreting their work. And as Thorn said in the duo’s Mixmag interview in discussing their musical progression, “It isn’t a straight line, and it isn’t a neatly ascending curve—it’s a proper old roller coaster.”
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