Here comes the rain again: Annie Lennox & I have always found the world a melancholy place. Lennox & I were born somehow old & pensive & just a tad more than a week apart. All her pain was poured into her songs. I gasped at the intensity projected in that powerful, luscious voice, but I feared for her sanity & my sanity as well. She is My Diva & one of my favorite artists ever.
Her next door neighbor- Sting insists she has a light side, & she hates being seen as a tragic figure, but she's conscious that crusading on behalf of HIV related causes doesn't lighten her image. Lennox: "There's nothing worse than someone who takes themselves terribly seriously. I want to avoid becoming a parody. Maybe I am already & I don't know it."
I believe her to be a person of conviction and passion she is as genuine as they get. All her solo works find the darkness & pull light from it anyway. They doesn’t deny despair, but they don’t suggest there’s nothing else. Lennox's videos are works of art, but I have chosen a live performance for your consideration:
I love what you say here... And I was born just a few weeks later so I 'get' it. Speaking as a female, married to a guy for a few decades, who gets it too. Our Eurythmics concert was in '86, and I understand exactly your surprise. Annie's voice live was quite a revelation. And continued to be! Her solo work has been even more astounding -- what a beautiful discovery for me, as I missed it at first. Who would have thought -- most artists from great groups don't quite hit the mark when they go solo, but not Annie, ever the iconoclast...her writing got even better, and her singing even more nuanced and rich.
ReplyDeleteYou are right, it never fails to reach the depths, acknowledging the darkness, yet pulling the light out of those depths until it works its transformation. What an astounding gift. Glad you picked 'Many Rivers To Cross'....that moment takes my heart and mind to places it needs to go -- every time. A simply epic moment in music. I'm grateful I get to share the planet with Annie and her music.