Bedsit Disco Queen

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.

“"Thorn's literary voice is as cheekily offbeat as her singing voice is rich and mellifluous." Time.com”

The Alan Bennett of pop memoirists. I loved her book so much I wanted to form a band, too. Preferably with Thorn -- Caitlin Moran, bestselling author of How to be a Woman 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 -- Alexis Petridis As a witty and wise chronicle of a life spent dipping in and out of the limelight, this is second to none -- Fiona Sturges Independent on Sunday Beautifully written, dryly funny and searingly honest Sunday Times

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.

'From 1982 to 2000, Tracey Thorn was half of Everything But The Girl. She looks back on it all with acerbic affection. She writes as perceptively about the music business as she does about her own contribution to it. Fab' Iain Finlayson, The Times 'The Everything But The Girl frontwoman and former Marine Girl seizes our attention because she never asks for it, and in that her authorial voice is like her singing voice, soft and low, magnetic' Zoe Williams, Guardian ' Bedsit Disco Queen is that most satisfying thing, a book that pulls back the veil with candour and humour, while charting a social history of UK pop with Zelig -like perspective' Kitty Empire, Observer 'An intensely readable account of thirty years of being in love with music ... Warm, assertive, sweetly funny, but most of all honest' Chris Harvey, Daily Telegraph 'Tracey Thorn is not your average pop star. This is probably the key to why Bedsit Disco Queen is so good -- as idiosyncratic, clever and entertaining as you'd expect' Claire Black, Scotsman

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.

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