Missing (3:45)

“Missing” is a song written and recorded by British pop music duo Everything but the Girl. The song was released as a single from the band’s 1994 album Amplified Heart. “Missing” is Everything but the Girl’s best-known hit and it is credited with revitalizing the duo’s musical career and steering members Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn into a successful electronic music direction.


Original release and remix

Prior to “Missing”, Everything but the Girl was most known as a folk and jazz group. They had released eight albums prior to Amplified Heart and had a number-three UK singles chart hit in 1988 (“I Don’t Want to Talk About It”), but were relatively unknown in the United States. “Missing” was recorded as a laid-back guitar-based pop song that had earned modest airplay on U.S. Adult Contemporary radio. The duo gave the track to house music producer Todd Terry to remix for clubs. The resulting dance version of “Missing” became a worldwide smash, matching Everything But the Girl’s UK best chart position of number three in November 1995 and hitting number one on the German singles chart. The song became the duo’s first U.S. Billboard Hot 100 entry, and after a long climb up the chart, it peaked at number two in 1996 (in its twenty-eighth chart week), eventually spending fifty-five weeks on the chart (a record at the time which has since been broken — the single is today the ninth-longest charting song on the U.S. Hot 100.).