Massive Attack featuring Tracey Thorn 'Protection'

Chart Peak: 14
YouTube

Massive Attack - a floating collective of rappers, DJs, singers and musicians - have featured at one time or another, talents such as Tricky, Shara Nelson and Nellee Hooper... 'Protection', a No.14 hit in January '95, features the vocal talents of Everything But The Girl's Tracey Thorn.

Funny they should mention Tricky, when only a couple of days ago he was performing on Radio 4 alongside June Whitfield. Not a very obvious combination of bookings, that. However, he's not involved with this particular track, though he does appear elsewhere on the album. Nellee Hooper's production is unmistakable of course.

In her autobiography Bedsit Disco Queen: How I grew up and tried to be a pop star, Thorn describes receiving the original demo cassette which included the backing track for the song song that became 'Protection'. With no lyrics or vocal melody, there was only a very minimal loop, presumably just the beat and guitar samples from 'The Payback' by James Brown (which had of course already appeared as part of 'The Payback Mix' on Now 12) at a very slow pace. She admits that it was a difficult sound to get used to initially, but claims to have finally got the inspiration to write a lyric and finished the whole job in ten minutes.

And what a lyric it is too. The arresting first verse "This girl I know needs some shelter... You can't change the way she feels, but you can put your arms around her" was apparently inspired by an unnamed person some friends had told her about, but the later parts of the song are of course based on her own protective feelings towards partner Ben Watt, then recovering from a near-fatal illness. In truth, the two parts are not entirely distinct, the real point of the lyric being about mutual support "I leaned on you for years, now you can lean on me/ That's more than love, that's the way it should be", reinforced by the swapping "You're a boy and I'm a girl" lyric to emphasise the role reversal not as a novelty but as a natural even instinctive reaction. Of course this also fits with Thorn's feminist principles and rejection of gender stereotypes. In this context, it's hard not the feel that the "girl I know" in the first verse could easily be the protagonist, though of course not necessarily the real-life Thorn. A song of determination rather than than physical strength or aggression (and thus, as some have pointed out, an inversion of the James Brown source) it's perfectly set by Thorn's mournful but steely vocal and the gradual sweep of Hooper's brilliant arrangement.

You can see why Massive ended up naming the album (their best one, in my opinion) after this song, although oddly it was only the second single released. Perhaps this was intentional so that they could put it out in January for maximum impact. Even in the shorter radio edit featured here the track packs a big punch, though even more so with the addition of Michel Gondry's outstanding promo video. Much as I'd like to boast about being into this at the time, the reality is that I was even less ready than Tracey Thorn and didn't really appreciate the song until a few years later. Still, I was lucky enough to acquire both CD single formats in that nice cardboard wallet (protection, you see) for only 50p a couple of years ago. And much as I hate to end on a superficial note, aren't the discs a lovely shade of blue?

Also appearing on: Now 19 [as Massive], 29, 40, 54
Available on: Singles Collection

Everything But The Girl 'Missing'

Chart Peak: 3 (original version 69 in 1994)

YouTube

Everything But The Girl Are Tracey Thorn & Ben Watt... This Todd Terry remix of 'Missing' has been huge in Europe (No. 1 in Italy for 6 weeks) and is due for UK release on 16th October 1995

You do have to wonder whether the placement of this particular track as the eighth on Disc Two suggests a slight underestimation of the success it was going to have. In the event it went straight into the Top 10 and kept climbing until it peaked at 3 a month later, and stayed in the Top 20 into 1996. Last I heard it was still the biggest-selling single ever to peak at 3. And if anything it was an even bigger hit in the USA, becoming the first single to last a full year on the singles chart.

One thing I remember about this is that, knowing it was a remix, I was quite surprised to hear the original version and realise how different it wasn't. The waters are muddied a little by the fact that this vid is titled as the remix (record companies, eh?) but that is in fact the 1994 single/album version, and it's already much dancier than any of their previous big hits, with the insistent beat and the thumping bass. Apparently, having become fans of dance music, they deliberately wrote this song to be remix-friendly (there are of course several other less famous mixes of it too). If anything, Todd Terry's version is actually more spacious than the original, leaving a bit more space for the haunted lyric.

And although we've all heard this song too many times to notice it now, this is a remarkably depressing lyric, a protagonist compelled seemingly against her will to keep revisiting the haunts she shared with a childhood friend. A friend so distant that she apparently wouldn't even know whether they were still alive: "Could you be dead?/You always were two steps ahead" is the sad centrepiece of the text. Perhaps this friend is, literally or metaphorically, her own younger self: either way, there's something quietly tragic about the way she keeps going through this ritual to no avail. The chilly electronic backing seems to help rather than hinder the effect; indeed that seems to be the main selling point here as I can't really envisage anybody actually dancing to this version.

It's well-known that the success of this single enabled EBTG to pursue the dance direction further on their last two albums, and on the subsequent solo projects. Moreover, for about the next five years there seemed to be a Todd Terry remix of absolutely everything, even the duo's earlier single 'Driving' (a cash-in by the record label they'd just left). Sadly, most of them seemed utterly generic and made me forget why I'd ever liked this.

Also appearing on: Now 21, 34
Available on: Like the Deserts Miss the Rain

Everything But The Girl 'Wrong'

Chart Peak: 8

Last.FM

Yes, this is another one that's fallen foul of Warner Music Group, although at least in this case they actually did release the record in the US. Not in Britain, though, where they'd just left for Virgin when their last Blanco Y Negro single, the Todd Terry remix of Missing, became the biggest hit of their career. 'Wrong' was the second Top Ten single from their label debut Walking Wounded and reflects their conversion to dance music, albeit a relatively low-key form thereof. It's an interesting idea to combine the beats of Drum & Bass with the typically mellow sound of the band and the distinctive voice of Tracy Thorn, but in practice something doesn't totally seem to gel: there isn't quite enough drama or tension to make it really count. A bit less good than I remember it really.

Also appearing on: Now 21, 32
Available on: Walking Wounded