Bedsit Disco Queen: How I grew up and tried to be a pop star

With an Introduction by John Miller. The Carl Rogers Reader. How I grew up and tried to be a pop star. Download Image Download Image. More books by Tracey Thorn. Find a book you'll love, get our newsletter name email. YES I have read and consent to Hachette Australia using my personal information or data as set out in its Privacy Policy and I understand I have the right to withdraw my consent at any time. This website uses cookies. Using this website means you are okay with this but you can find out more and learn how to manage your cookie choices here.

That and the voice of Tracey Thorn.

Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to Be a Pop Star by Tracey Thorn: review

The serendipitous story of Tracey's career and the machinations of the pop industry make an interesting story, moreso because it is Really enjoyed this book. The serendipitous story of Tracey's career and the machinations of the pop industry make an interesting story, moreso because it is also well written. She comes over as very honest, personable and recreates the era perfectly. I had plenty of chuckles, recognising things I'd forgotten all about Do-Dos cough tablets. The bit that I was delighted to see had a chapter of its own was their trip to Moscow in I was there as a delegate at the World Festival of Youth and Students, as a 14 year old boy away from my parents and had a great time.

There as performers, and a few years older and wiser, they saw the whole experience with different eyes from me, but many of her recollections I could relate to, such as the parties at night in the foyer of Hotel Cosmos. I did get some mileage out of nonchalantly telling the cool girls at school that Ben and Tracey were a few doors up the corridor from me although I was a bit too starstruck to have ventured a "Hello" to them.

I also liked the insertion of the song lyrics between chapters, which illustrate how personal her songwriting is. It was nice to get the chance to read through them and understand the context.

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Good stuff all round. May 10, Adam Stone rated it really liked it. Bedsit Disco Queen is the memoir of the female half of the eighties and nineties pop duo Everything but the Girl.

The book is not just about Everything but the Girl though, it is also about music in general and being a pop star in those halcyon days. It begins in the late nineteen seventies when Tracey first becomes interested in music. Even if you only know Everything but the Girl from the song Missing there will be lots to enjoy in this book and that is mainly because it is well written and is Bedsit Disco Queen is the memoir of the female half of the eighties and nineties pop duo Everything but the Girl.

Even if you only know Everything but the Girl from the song Missing there will be lots to enjoy in this book and that is mainly because it is well written and is set in a very interesting time for music and also for British society as a whole. I do find that I now have an appreciation of the music of Everything but the Girl that I really didn't have before, which may be a by-product of reading this book, or maybe that it just me.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in music of nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, and not just people who are fans of Everything but the Girl, because there is much more to this book than just a biography of that band, though it could also be read as such if you really wanted to.

For me it is a memoir of a person who lived through that time told with warmth and heart and a great deal of humour thrown in for good measure. Feb 20, Rachel Stevenson rated it liked it. I liked EBTG even during their dinner party jazz-lite phase which, pace Thorn, was actually the anti-rockist avant-garde and I was impressed with Tracey Thorn's '90s reinvention as an electro-goddess. In her memoir, Tracey is witty, self-deprecating and self-aggrandising in turn, and she is blessed with amazing powers of recall.

Pertinent lyrics are printed between chapters, a I liked EBTG even during their dinner party jazz-lite phase which, pace Thorn, was actually the anti-rockist avant-garde and I was impressed with Tracey Thorn's '90s reinvention as an electro-goddess.

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Pertinent lyrics are printed between chapters, and I turned to youtube to hear the songs that I hadn't encountered before. Even the gig where she duets on Fever with Paul Weller is available on the internet. However, I had a few issues with the book. The first is Thorn writing about past events in the present tense, which I always find irritating: Secondly in the section on how she became a punk rocker, she writes about how punk caused a greater generation gap than any time before or since.

But every person following a musical movement thinks this. It would certainly not have gone down well to become a rock 'n' roll greaser in the conservative '50s. Let's not forget that Frank Sinatra, so unhip that Thorn's parents liked them, was the ruin of '40s America, allegedly.

It was the war that caused punk — cities were bombed to pieces and the survivors moved out to the suburbs for a better life, which their offspring rejected — especially after the '60s had rejuvenated and regenerated London.

Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to Be a Pop Star by Tracey Thorn: review - Telegraph

From Crawley to Woking to Hemel Hempstead: Thirdly, the oft-repeated phrases: Recently, there have been a few books by Women In Rock — Herstory, if you will — and here is my favourite part of Bedsit Disco Queen that explains why they need to keep being written: It drove me mad to discover that the kind of docility which I'd hoped had died out in about could still be appealing to boys who seemed otherwise to be the same generation to me.

I was probably a bit slow on the uptake but I had assumed that the qualities I found attractive in boys — being clever and spirited and having a good record collection and being in a band — would work in reverse. But I was starting to wake up to the fact that of course many boys found those things threatening and unattractive in a girl. Mar 16, Frances rated it really liked it Shelves: I wasn't a huge Everything But the Girl fan, but since reading her partner Ben Watt's book 'Patient' a few years ago I've rather admired Tracey Thorn - she seemed like a real person in a rather artificial profession.

It isn't an arch tale of celebrity anecdotes, although famous people certainly are mentioned, and her musical ambitions are balanced by the importance she gives to her partner and children. I'd recommend this to anyone who grew up in the same era, or is just tired of the 'instant stardom without any hard work' that so much of modern culture is obsessed with. Jul 05, Whitson rated it it was amazing. Her story is engaging and I certainly felt I learnt about her experiences and motivations across her varied career. It was particularly interesting to read lyrics to her songs alongside the stories about the events that inspired them.

If you like a pop biog then you should buy this book. Feb 10, Rodney Farrant rated it it was amazing. Just spent the morning reading Bedsit Disco Queen. I loved this book and couldn't put it down. But more so, it is a fascinating and compelling account of an unconventional and alternative pop career. Thorn's voice throughou Just spent the morning reading Bedsit Disco Queen.

Thorn's voice throughout this book is witty, charming, honest and engaging. Apr 21, Lara rated it it was amazing. Beautifully written as you would expect from a woman who managed to get a First in Eng Lit while juggling two bands, a solo career, and touring. This is wry and understated, and Tracey comes across as level-headed and self-aware as she remembers her youth and almost nerdy passion for making music, and the highs and embarrassing lows of being a pop star. Feb 26, William rated it it was amazing Shelves: Feb 16, Mark Walker rated it really liked it.

Well written and honest. Plenty of good anecdotes about record company lunacy, and other pop stars. Strongly recommended to the many people who appreciate EBTG. Any pop group that did benefit gigs for the Miners in the s and numerous other lefty causes is alright by me.

Thorn describes some of the political activity that punctuated her career in this book as well as beautifully describing the madness of the music industry with wit, irony and charm. Thorn is not your average pop star and seems very down to earth.

I read the book in just a few days having bought it from the music section of the Baltic Bookshop in Gateshead. I bought her next book, Naked at the Albert Hall, at the same time. You will be too if you read this book. So, do yourself a favour and go and buy it or get it from your local library. As a huge fan of The Jam, Britain's biggest group in the late 70s and early 80s, who garnered 18 top 40 hits in that time, I was keenly interested in Paul Weller's next band The Style Council.

Imagine my delight when Everything But the Girl did it even better. Songs like "Each and Every One", "Tender Blue", "Frost and Fire", sung by this ethereal voice laden with world weariness and angst, but with the purity of hope. Tracey Thorn could sing me the telephone book, a newspaper or a travel brochure and I would swoon. Her memoir "Bedsit Disco Queen: She writes of the vagaries of the musician's world, the acquisition of and the evanescence of fame. She explores her feelings of self-confidence in her abilities, her beliefs, her feminism with much introspection and thoughtfulness.

Jun 26, Diane Dyke rated it really liked it Shelves: It is not one I would have chosen, however I am so glad I did as I really enjoyed it. The early chapters are the very early stirrings of the bands Tracey was part of pre EBTG and I could feel the shy girl transforming into a performer, however the chapters are quite detailed and I did wonder when it was going to get the good stuff the showbiz I read this autobiography from the "Everything but the Girl" lead singer for my WI Book Club. The early chapters are the very early stirrings of the bands Tracey was part of pre EBTG and I could feel the shy girl transforming into a performer, however the chapters are quite detailed and I did wonder when it was going to get the good stuff the showbiz lifestyle.

However that lifestyle is not Tracey Thorn and the book and her music is probably the better for it. Her lack of interest in the glamourous stuff fame brings is so refreshing that it just keeps you wanting to know more. I would really recommend this to anyone who enjoys music or autobiographies it is definitely one of the better ones I have read.

Feb 07, Claudia rated it it was amazing Shelves: Tracey might not be a professional audio narrator but her disarmingly ordinary voice is the perfect vehicle for a book made up of quietly extraordinary prose. Tracey really can write. It comes as no surprise to discover she attained a first in her English degree at Hull University.

Nor that she went on to do an MA later. Her words are straight and true, elegant and poised, like the lyrics to her songs. It sounds incredibly naff of me to say that, listening to this book, I identified with Tracey Thorn.

Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to Be a Pop Star by Tracey Thorn

There seem to be many parallels in our lives, both superficial and profound. Tracey is the same age as me, born in the south. Like me, she missed out on the inception of punk but, when she caught up with it, she was deeply affected by it and by much that came in its wake. She went to study English at a northern university. Already, by this point, she was in a band, the acclaimed Marine Girls. I had long dreamt of being in a band and I formed one at university. Okay, so mine was just a crappy university band, the highlight of our brief career being a live appearance on Radio York.

Tracey also met her long-term partner at this age, as I did mine.

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Okay, so hers was Ben Watt and they went on to form a highly creative, professional partnership. But still, the way she alludes to their relationship over the years strikes many familiar chords. She tells their story indirectly, allowing a sense of them as a couple to evolve through the unravelling of their shared lives. What Tracey does tell us about, with wit and insight, is the bizarre and random nature of a volatile, and perhaps unlikely, career in pop. The fear of compromise and the continual paradox of artistry and its inherent artificiality set against a quest for truth.

It sounds too vapid to say her account is honest. And she is not afraid to congratulate herself when she thinks she deserves it; over a good song, for example, and rightly so. In fact, in her book she achieves the admirable and elusive quality she seeks in her art generally: A further circumstantial similarity between us is that Tracey gave birth to premature twins at almost the same time I gave birth to mine. Mine also began life in incubators wired up to machines.

And we both went onto have a third child. That would plainly be ridiculous. She describes some priceless moments of absurd juxtaposition in her life as a popstar. And then, later, as a Mum who used to be a popstar. She mentions how the Madonna brand of feminism failed to move her, as it did me. And what a great partner Ben Watts has obviously been, vilified, apparently, by some overly zealous fans for keeping Tracey in the kitchen looking after the babies when this is what she chose and wanted to do and he simply supported her without question.

I finished the book this morning whilst walking my dog on a muddy common in the rain, listening through the grey woollen headphones I got for Christmas. Tracey admits it ends rather perfunctorily and explains why. This ending — typically unsentimental, honest and true — had a devastating effect on me. I simply burst into tears. And I cried all the way home.

Tracey is definitely my sort of person. Sep 17, Jordan Cullen rated it it was amazing. Tracey Thorn's deliciously readable memoir takes in her progression from bedroom pop obsessive through first musical forays with The Marine Girls, university days in Hull and meeting Ben Watt, forming Everything But The Girl with him and appearing on 'Top of the Pops' whilst completing her final exams, burgeoning success on the indie circuit, Watt's near-fatal illness and worldwide success courtesy of a club remix Her narrative Tracey Thorn's deliciously readable memoir takes in her progression from bedroom pop obsessive through first musical forays with The Marine Girls, university days in Hull and meeting Ben Watt, forming Everything But The Girl with him and appearing on 'Top of the Pops' whilst completing her final exams, burgeoning success on the indie circuit, Watt's near-fatal illness and worldwide success courtesy of a club remix Thorn spends an entire page wishing she had invented Twitter in , so that EBTG could be spared the lonely misery of being caught between a highly critical label and a fanbase whose composition was a mystery.

Thorn lays bare the process of being a successful creative as a push-me-pull-you of kismet, endless compromise, false starts, luck and Todd Terry remixes. As misfortune, and fortune, would have it, EBTG got dropped by their UK label, just before Terry's remix of Missing would tear up dancefloors all over the world. But this gave Thorn and Watt huge creative freedom, as well as money in their pockets. The truly rewarding passages are less about the band's chart positions always lower than forecast , and more about Thorn herself, her suburban upbringing, her lyrics, her feminism, her postgraduate interests, and her relationship with Watt.

The worldly jazzy boho to her year-old girl-band veteran, Watt contracted a life-threatening illness in , the subject of his own previous tome, Patient Thorn writes rivetingly about the anxious monotony of a carer's limbo, and, tentatively, about the love between them, with very little yuck factor. If 80s feminism decreed that the personal was political, then Thorn and Watt's situation complicated matters further: The bleep of hospital machines recurs again with the premature birth of Thorn and Watt's eldest twins.

Her tale rips along, chatty, studded with song lyrics, diary entries, cuttings and snapshots like the one of the cassette labelled "Massive idea" — the kernel of the track that would become Protection. You can't fail to smile when someone describing the rivalries between teenage bands says: Perhaps the fondest eye-roll of all here is the way Thorn attempts to reconcile "pop star Trace" her sobriquet at Hull University with her other job.

When Thorn signed up, no one warned her, either, that one day, she might be pushing her youngest around Gap and Missing would come on the stereo.