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Warning: contains spoilers for The Jetty episode one.

Musician Tracey Thorn’s poignant, funny 2019 memoir Another Planet: A Teenager in Suburbia contains a simple line that speaks volumes. Remembering the mid-1970s discos she went to aged 13, Thorn describes dancing with and kissing older boys, and the code she used for the ones that gave her “wandering hands trouble”. It’s a fun, nostalgic chapter that’s written with a light touch and includes some of her old diary entries. One boy wore a tie and had his own car, wrote 13-year-old-her; another was a police officer. Adult-Thorn does that queasy maths most women eventually do when revisiting adolescent sexual experiences. She wonders if she even looked as old as 13 in those days, and breezily delivers the killer verdict: “I didn’t know I was still a child, and the boys didn’t care either way.”

New BBC crime series...

A class being offered at Harvard on Taylor Swift next semester is officially titled “English 183ts. Taylor Swift and Her World.” A critic who will teach the course has revealed why it is worthy of study.

But when her class was announced last month, many began to wonder out loud if a “millennial pop star deserves this kind of treatment at a world-class university.”

Stephanie Burt, a literary critic who will teach the course at Harvard, penned a convincing argument in The Atlantic and deftly argued that students “benefit from studying art that they love — art new and old, art in many genres,” reports etonline.com.

It’s not the first time a Swift class is available at an institution of higher learning. Stanford, NYU and the University of Texas at Austin are just some of the universities offering similar courses.

The hour-long class at Harvard will aim to explore...

Everything But the Girl — the prolific pop duo of Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt best known for their 1994 club hit “Missing” — have returned today (April 21st) with Fuse, their first studio album in 24 years.

The English music duo went on an amicable, indefinite hiatus in 2000, choosing to go out on a natural high note. Their re-emergence appears to have come about just as organically: “Ironically the finished sound of the new album was the last thing on our mind when we started in March 2021,” Thorn said in a press release. “Of course, we were aware of the pressures of such a long-awaited comeback, so we tried to begin instead in a spirit of open-minded playfulness, uncertain of the direction, receptive to invention.”

Watt adds: “It was exciting. A natural dynamism developed. We spoke in short-hand, and little looks, and co-wrote instinctively. It became more than the sum of our two selves.

“To sing is to pray twice,” said St Augustine. It’s a haunting line – perhaps celebrating the miracle of human hope over any expectation of divine attention– that Tracey Thorn quotes with aching resonance on Fuse, Everything But the Girl’s first album in 24 years. It’s an album that makes a church of its elegant electronica: all vaulting arcs of yearning melody and glimmers of stained glass that dance upwards, to the familiar urban spire of Thorn’s beautiful, hangdog voice.

“I’ve always been an atheist,” Thorn wrote in a column published in the third month of the pandemic. But, taking her daily walks around a London graveyard, she found her questions and her internal dialogue with her mother (who’d been dead for a decade) beginning to feel “a bit like prayers. How long, oh lord, how long?” Perhaps it’s strange to say, but Ebtg have...

Who would have guessed? Everything But The Girl have returned in one of the year’s most surprising—and welcome—comebacks. The married London duo of Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt quit making music together in 2000, taking time to raise their family while working separately. Fuse is their first collaboration since 1999’s underrated gem Temperamental, which topped off the amazing Nineties trilogy they began with Amplified Heart and Walking Wounded. But Everything But The Girl hit home with their trademark style of ghostly electro-pop, with Thorn’s melancholy voice floating through the glitchy beats.

Like many people, musicians Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn found themselves in isolation during the pandemic, conjuring up memories of sharing space with strangers on a dancefloor. The time spent indoors would eventually lead the pair, who began releasing music in the Eighties as Everything But the Girl, to find the creative spark that would become their new album, Fuse, out April 21st. The group’s first official release in 24 years.

Speaking via Zoom from the couple’s home in London, Watt, who was diagnosed with the rare autoimmune disease...

British duo Everything But the Girl have shared another new song, “Run a Red Light,” from their forthcoming comeback album, Fuse, out April 21.

The song is a smoldering ballad, with producer Ben Watt weaving buzzing synths and heavy kicks around a steady piano progression. Tracey Thorn captures the feeling of invincibility and vulnerability that late-night adventures conjure, building to a hook where she sings, “Run a red light, forget the morning, this is tonight.”

“I met a lot of characters during my years in clubland, and I wrote this song...

Everything But the Girl have unveiled “Caution to the Wind,” the second single from Fuse, their first album of new material in 24 years.

The married electronic pop duo — comprised of lead singer Tracey Thorn and producer Ben Watt — embrace a perfect night and ride the proverbial “Caution to the Wind” while luxuriating in the track’s hypnotic solace. Although the stars have aligned and the sky has formed a “cathedral,” Thorn still traces the song’s divine energy to her most intimate comfort in the chorus: “Home to be with you/ Home to be near you.”

In a statement, Thorn shared, “Lyrically, ‘Caution to the Wind’ is a simple song about arrival and seizing the moment, so with the music we tried to capture the feeling of a perpetual point in time.”

Watt added, “I let the words quickly collapse and loop inside the production. The drums emerge and repeat,...

Fans of Low are continuing to mourn Mimi Parker, who died Saturday after battling ovarian cancer. A day after her death, Robert Plant honored Parker by performing a cover of one of the duo’s songs.

“We’ve been drawn to the music of the great duo Low from Duluth, Minnesota, and sadly tonight, we know that unfortunately we’ve lost one of those two people,” Plant said during a show in Glasgow. “So we give our songs tonight to Mimi and Alan [Sparhawk].”

Plant — who was performing with his band...

Everyone talks about perfect summer songs, but hardly anyone discusses great winter ones — tunes that capture a certain cold, bleak, will-spring-ever-arrive? mood. Its title aside, Ben Watt’s “Summer Ghosts” is one of those songs, and beautifully so.

Triggered by something, seemingly a painting of his mother, the one-time half of English pop duo Everything But the Girl finds himself ruminating on his past — especially his parents with “their own shit, wrapped up in themselves, jazz on the shelves.” Whether it’s an actual trip or just one taking place in his mind,...

Great British Bake Off really hit its stride during Bread Week this evening (August 19) and Twitter could barely contain its excitement during the show.

There was some baguette-based banter on display and Paul produced one of the greatest showstoppers ever seen on the programme.

The Great British Bake Off: Who went home tonight?

The Great British Bake Off: The 7 most spectacular showstoppers ever

Nadiya's facial expressions are the best thing about The Great British Bake Off

Digital Spy was watching Twitter throughout and has gathered the best comments viewers had on Gbbo's third week below:

There were huge levels of excitement for Bread Week as the show got underway

Bread week #Gbbo

— Gogglebox Scarlett (@ScarlettMoffatt) August 19, 2015

even the music makes me happy! #Gbbo

— Marian Keyes (@MarianKeyes) August 19, 2015

How To Convey 'Bread Week' Through The Medium Of Mime. #Gbbo pic.twitter.com/nzoz6yQthW

— BBC One (@BBCOne) August 19, 2015

I...

Great British Bake Off really hit its stride during Bread Week this evening (August 19) and Twitter could barely contain its excitement during the show.

There was some baguette-based banter on display and Paul produced one of the greatest showstoppers ever seen on the programme.

The Great British Bake Off: Who went home tonight?

The Great British Bake Off: The 7 most spectacular showstoppers ever

Nadiya's facial expressions are the best thing about The Great British Bake Off

Digital Spy was watching Twitter throughout and has gathered the best comments viewers had on Gbbo's third week below:

There were huge levels of excitement for Bread Week as the show got underway

Bread week #Gbbo

— Gogglebox Scarlett (@ScarlettMoffatt) August 19, 2015

even the music makes me happy! #Gbbo

— Marian Keyes (@MarianKeyes) August 19, 2015

How To Convey 'Bread Week' Through The Medium Of Mime. #Gbbo pic.twitter.com/nzoz6yQthW

— BBC One (@BBCOne) August 19, 2015

I...

Cinedigm has acquired the North American distribution rights to "The Falling," the story of a tragedy and a fainting epidemic that hit an English girls' school in 1969. Written and directed by Carol Morley ("Dreams Of A Life"), the film stars Maisie Williams, who plays fan-favorite Arya Stark on "Game of Thrones," and features a spooky soundtrack by Tracey Thorn. "'The Falling' is a mesmerizing psychological drama that delivers a tremendous emotional punch," said Yolanda Macias, Cinedigm’s Executive Vice President of Acquisitions. "Carol has made an intriguing and unsettling film which has cult status written all over it." The film will have a national theatrical, VOD and digital download release beginning late summer 2015. Read More: Monterey Media Acquires Tiff Selection 'Cut Snake'...

Director Carol Morley has come up with another brilliant and very distinctive feature, about an epidemic of fainting that grips a girls school in the 1960s

Carol Morley’s entirely absorbing new film is about a mysterious outbreak of mass hysterical fainting at a girls’ school in the late 1960s. The Falling is a non-sci-fi sci-fi, a deadly serious black comedy and a psychological drama in which psychological assessments are beside the point. It comes from the heart of a certain kind of Englishness: as murky, wet and luxurious as the water in which Millais drowned Ophelia. With its superb musical soundtrack by Tracey Thorn, it actually has a seductive prog-rock sensibility, with something of Nick Drake. And in fact this entire deeply strange drama feels like the film version of some giant lost concept album that the late Syd Barrett might have been working on over 20 years in his bedroom.

It's been 31 years since Everything But The Girl frontman Ben Watt went out on his own with a solo studio album. Thanks to friend Mark Cousins, the acclaimed Irish critic and director of the 15-part revisionist film history epic "The Story of Film," the title track of Watt's new record "Hendra" now has a music video. Watch "Hendra," exclusive to Thompson on Hollywood!, below. Following a treatment competition, the winning script came from across the pond, penned by British screenwriter Rahim Moledina, who also directed the video for "Hendra." Cousins and Watt supervised the filmmaking, which took place in East London on a shoestring budget. Cousins calls the video, inspired by Watt's lyrics about dreams of his late half-sister, a "mini-masterpiece." See for yourself below. Ben Watt's new record "Hendra" arrives on April 29.

Mike Milosh and Robin Hannibal operate under the collective pseudonym, Rhye, a simple, slightly mysterious band name that began popping up on the internet early last year. That was when the alluring duo began posting soul-infused, electronic pop songs to a worldwide audience.

On March 4, the part-Canadian, part-Danish group will debut their first album, "Woman," a 10-song LP that gushes with sexualized lyrics and dense, jazz-inclined instrumentation. Garnering comparisons to Sade and Tracey Thorn, you'd be surprised to know that the breathy vocals of Rhye's record belong to Mr. Milosh, a singer and instrumentalist who knows how to showcase the softness of his contralto pipes. In fact, both partners are male, yet they produce arresting, bedroom music we tend to associate with the wailing women of contemporary music.

Perhaps Rhye is following in the trend of hard-to-place singer-songwriters like Frank Ocean and Miguel, who tip toe around genres, medling components of funk,...

From an Austen anniversary to a Sundance full of female talent, the new year is already packed with highlights. What are you looking forward to this year?

No one expects 2013 to be easy, but we'll take our kicks where we can, and only a week in, there are already cultural triumphs for women to celebrate. The band Haim, three sisters from California, stormed to the top of the BBC's Sound of 2013 list, and for the first time all five categories of the Costa prize were won by women. The frontrunner to take the overall prize on 29 January is Hilary Mantel, with her novel Bring Up the Bodies, but Mary and Bryan Talbot's graphic memoir, Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, has also been highly lauded.

There are plenty of other books to look forward to, including Bedsit Disco Queen by Tracey Thorn (Virago, February), Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld, (Doubleday, June), a...

Gift bag: Tracey Thorn's Christmas album, Brooklyn We Go Hard, Zara velvet tuxedo. Regift: mini-wedge trainers, beanie hair, Little Mix

Going Up

A Christmas pug Liberty's £3.95 bauble is totally this year's penguin.

Tracey Thorn's Tinsel and Lights Lovely album to accompany festive baking or tree decorating. Mulled wine essential.

Bhs interiors Heads up! Next spring they've got pin-tuck sheets, colour-pop chairs, cluster pendant lighting and trifle-bowl lampshades.

Brooklyn We Go Hard Christmas tip for chaps! Loving this Parisian menswear, especially the elbow-patch shirts.

Zara's velvet "Balmain" tuxedo Gold buttons + contrast lapel = ideal party jacket for shoulder robing.

Muji candles Log Fire and Berry Tart are Christmas in a tin for £3.50. Bargain!

Going down

Beanie hair Officially the worst hat hair to have: flat, fuzzy and drab

Mini-wedge trainers Wedge trainers are not a halfway-house trend. It's full-on wedge or nowt.

Pink wedding dresses This year's colour for blushing...

Who but Tracey Thorn (of the beloved UK duo Everything But The Girl) would deliver a first single from her new album that could be sad, observant and yet make you laugh? That's exactly what she does with the song "Oh, The Divorces." Anyone who has reached their 40s and suddenly realized that the wave of weddings they attended in their 20s is now being followed by a wave of separations will smile ruefully at the first lines: "Who's next? Who's next?" Then comes the killer observation of a familiar moment delivered in her trademark voice of quiet compassion: "the afternoon handover by the swings." You're immediately struck by what a commonplace event it is - one ex-spouse passing the kids along to another -- and yet how piercingly sad it is and the fact that Thorn is the first...

Essential Sounds (2010/05/20)

Welcome once again to your fresh supply of all things fantastic. I have, as always, spent the past week looking in every nook and cranny for the best new music the world has to offer just for you. On the menu this week we have a collective mix spanning from the depths of Denmark to the underground dancefloors of New York. So what are you waiting for? Dig in and bon appetite!

1. “Back To The Fuck Yeah” by Pulled Apart By Horses

Hailing from my former stomping ground here in the UK, Pulled Apart By Horses are a fairly fresh faced alt rock group coming straight out of Leeds. Having only been together as a band since 2008 they are still defining their sound but if this number is anything to go by we should be hearing a lot more from them in the near future. There’s a...

Like an old Sinatra LP, the title of Tracey Thorn’s third solo disc neatly outlines its thematic concerns. Love And Its Opposite doesn’t have a narrative through-line or anything, but the adult concerns of the lyrics on “Oh, The Divorces!” (“Who’s next? / Always the ones you least expect”) and “Singles Bar” (“I lay on my back for a Hollywood wax / I’m stripped and I’m French-manicured / Can you guess my age in these jeans?”) have a maturity and centeredness that is nicely matched by Thorn’s warm-honey vocal tone. Ewan Pearson, the British producer who also ...

This week, the Big Music Machine is raising the musical dead. The Black Keys bring the blues back from the grave one more time, while the Rolling Stones reanimate a rock classic, Tracey Thorn returns from Everything But the Girl purgatory, and Nas & Damian Marley summon the ghosts of their African brothers. Please press play now and thank me later. Vote: When is a band too old to rock? Play: The Rolling Stones, "Exile on Main St." [Reissue] In 1971 the Stones were in self-imposed tax exile in a former Nazi headquarters. Keith Richards was in the grips of a major heroin addiction, Mick Jagger was waiting for his wife to give birth, and the band rarely met at the same time. It was the perfect recipe for a masterpiece recording. "Exile on Main St." is the blueprint for every ragged,...

Robert '3D' Del Naja has said that Massive Attack would never intentionally plan to make a star-filled album. The band's upcoming LP Heligoland features a number of guest singers, including Damon Albarn, Tunde Adebimpe, Guy Garvey, Martina Topley-Bird and long-time collaborator Horace Andy. Massive Attack's previous records have also boasted vocals from artists including Shara Nelson, Tricky, Tracey Thorn, Elizabeth Fraser and Sinéad O'Connor. Del Naja told Metro: "We'd never make a deliberately star-studded album but when you (more)...

The Australian equivalent to America's Kim Stolz is Ruby Rose, an out lesbian MTV VJ. At close to 6' tall with dark brown hair and bangs that hang just above her sparkly green eyes, she is always smiling when in front of the camera.

The Sydney-based brunette became known outside of her homeland over the summer when she was spotted holding hands and kissing Jess Origliasso of the twin-pop band The Veronicas, which toured with Disney teens The Jonas Brothers.

Jess' bisexuality came into question and Ruby was dragged into the tabloids with her.

Ruby Rose (left) with Jess Origliasso

Most recently, Rose has been "spotted" kissing the “straight” Australia's Next Top Model contestant, Samantha Downie.

Rose (who is only 21) seems unfazed by it, though, and says she's dating someone who isn't Jess, but won't comment further on it.

She recently told Australia's The Daily Telegraph, "I'm sick of seeing...