Tracey Thorn Quotes

I realise that this is exactly how inspirational artists work, and why we need them. They don’t inspire the brave (they’re fine already); they inspire the timid.

Too embarrassed even to try as long as everyone was looking at me, I made what was probably a fairly unique request. ‘Um, I’ll have a go. But I can’t do it if you’re all looking at me. Can I go inside the wardrobe and sing from there?’ The others looked at me strangely, possibly beginning to worry about the apparent absence of any stage personality in this girl they had just recruited, but to their credit they agreed, without killing themselves laughing, and so in I went. From inside my hidey-hole I sang David Bowie’s ‘Rebel Rebel’. I emerged to a very positive response, the others all declaring that I sounded like Siouxsie Sioux – I was trying very hard to – and while I was quite pleased with myself, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to do it in front of an audience. We could hardly take the wardrobe around with us.

Here’s a quote from the musician Tracey Thorn of Everything but the Girl. I think it’s great. It really describes the problem of irony: ‘It is difficult for people in the arts to be entirely sincere about things without looking like they have not thought it out properly. The problem with irony is that it assumes the position of being the end result, from having looked at it from both sides and having a very sophisticated take on everything. So the danger of eschewing irony is that you look as though you’ve not thought hard enough about it and that you’re being a bit simplistic.

Missing’s success came about in part because it brought a moment of melancholy and heartbreak back to the dancefloor, a combination many people had always loved but perhaps forgotten. (…) electronic music with beats. It could be melodic and heartfelt, as well as experimental. Slow and moody. Atmospheric.

When I left home, and met more worldly middle-class people, I realised that being called Tracey, and saying lounge and serviette and settee, meant that, whatever my mum thought, I may as well have had the word COMMON branded on my forehead.

Dear Lindy, You won’t believe what I’ve done: me, the quiet one. I’ve written it down, written you down, told all your stories, tried to capture you in the pages of a book. Some people know about you already, or think they do; you’re sort of famous. Others have never heard of you, but I don’t think it matters either way. This isn’t a rock biography, and although the story of your band, The Go-Betweens, is part of the narrative, the real story is you. Or maybe, in truth, the story is you and me, the arc of a friendship, the imprint one person leaves on another.