Bloody Students

Even though I was mostly listening to Northern Soul when I was at art college in the early 80s, there's something about this ancient Everything But The Girl video that perfectly captures the feel of those days. It's not just the hair and the clothes or their pale, skinny frames that look like they could do with a good meal, but together with the maudlin wetness of the music it's like a Proustian sensory experience of what it was like to be a student back then. The dishwater-gray Northern sky and industrial bridge give it a real "Thatcher's Britain" vibe too.

Of course Ben and Tracey were students themselves at the time and when they joined together to form EBTG they created the uber student couple. Art college was probably a little weirder than regular university (at least I hope it was) but I'm sure the same rules still applied: everyone listened to The Smiths and New Order, lived on beans on toast, got their hair cut by the local barber (mine was called Eric The Razor), bought their clothes second-hand from charity shops or vintage 50s emporiums like Flip, and Ben and Tracey's gentle acoustic pop was what you heard drifting from student rooms late at night — the soundtrack to many a miserable night alone with a book or, if you were lucky, inexperienced fumblings with the bra of some cute indie girl. We were all so much younger then.