The Language of Life

pop scene, Everything but the Girl graduated to the big leagues with 1990’s The Language of Life, which was—as singer Tracey Thorn put it in her autobiography—“a fully realized, immaculately performed and produced modern American soul-pop record.” Recorded in glitzy Los Angeles with jazz producer Tommy LiPuma and a host of high-caliber session players, the album is an impossibly stylish and mature album, especially considering Thorn and partner Ben Watt had been studying at college just a few years earlier. Like their nearest contemporary, Sade, the duo were after a sound both timeless and utterly contemporary. For all of Watt’s talent (he wrote most of the songs and was responsible for the band’s general musical direction), this would have been a much less soulful record without Thorn’s vocals. Her sensuality isn't canned, nor is it commercialized. Her sexiness feels authentic because it won’t disguise its underlying sorrow. Forlorn and luxurious, “Meet Me in the Morning,” “Take Me,” and “Driving” made most everything else of that era seem crass by comparison.