Album · Everything But The Girl
The Language of Life by Everything But The Girl
The Language of Life is an album by Everything But The Girl, released in 1990. 1 song from it has charted on rock radio countdowns, with 3 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “Driving”, on 3 lists with a best position of #365.
The Language of Life, Everything but the Girl's fifth album, arrived on 5 February 1990 through Atlantic and Blanco y Negro, with Tommy LiPuma producing. Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, the duo who got together in Hull back in 1982, went all the way into sophisti-pop here: soft-focus jazz shading, glossy late-night arrangements, everything buffed until it gleams, with "Driving" gliding along out front.
It paid off at the till, becoming their second album to sell past 500,000 copies, but it split their British following down the middle. Thorn herself was frank about it in 2012, calling it a slick, semi-jazzy, sophisticated record and admitting that, looking back, the pair couldn't really explain why they had chosen that road. The electronic reinvention that "Missing" set off in 1994 was still years away.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from The Language of Life on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Driving | 3 | #365 | – | 2010–2022 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.