Annie Lennox long struck me as a strange proposition – a tall, pale, willowy, otherworldly, short-haired fierce-as-fuck Scottish ice queen, supplying vocals laced with Old Testament foreboding to Dave Stewart’s inhuman Depeche Mode-style soundscapes. It was a watershed moment in my life when I saw her cavorting around on stage at Live Aid, or Live 8, or Freddy Mercury’s funeral, or some other Nuremburg Rally-like knee’s up for lovies, dripping unreconstructed sentimentality from every pour and hamming it up about how “love dares you to change our ways of caring about ourselves”, blah blah blah, as if the blood-chilling line “some of them want to abuse you, some of them want to be abused” had never issued forth from her vast, vagina dentata-triggering maw. The arctic blue-eyed Chieftainess of the Highlands gone all doe-eyed and touchy-feely, selling out just to share a stage with Saint David. Not exactly punk, is it?
But in retrospect I should have seen it in the tealeaves, because Diva, Annie’s first solo album, is also very far removed from the autistic electronic drone of Eurythmics. She finally found the cajónes to strike out on her own, and then she subsequently delivered what can only be described as an exceedingly strange but, ultimately, singularly of-its-time pop album. For indeed, Diva’s peculiar mishmash of styles might have sounded state-of-the-art in 1992, but from today’s perspective, it’s uncomfortably redolent of En Vogue or Eternal, which is verily the most insulting thing you can say about any album ever made.
It starts strong with “Why?” and “Walking on Broken Glass”, two unusual, cinematic, genuinely original art-pop songs with downcast lyrics about toxic relationships. After that, though, the baleful soul influences creep in, and an unseemly spectacle begins to take shape; a twenty-foot-tall pasty-faced amazon from Aberdeen conjuring the dread specters of Sisters with Voices-style R’n’B (“Precious”), Sade-esque synth-gospel (“Cold”), and something that sounds excruciatingly like M People (“Legend in my Living Room”). Most harrowingly of all, she goes all Jenny-from-the-block on “Money Can’t Buy It”, and then, in a final insult, has the audacity to summon the almost uniquely naff bedroom-bound vinyl-scratching Medieval weirdo Enigma on “Stay By Me.”
I’m being too harsh, obviously, because all of this is perfectly listenable and even enjoyable – an early 90s pop album which remains consistent from start to finish. That’s no mean feat, as anyone who has sat through the entirety of Elegant Slumming will be all too aware. After all, in addition to the opening pair of classic singles, there’s also time for an engaging Eurythmics throwback with “Little Bird” – strikingly, the only song on this album that sounds anything like a Dave Stewart composition, come to think of it – plus an interesting (if dated) flirtation with world music on “Primitive.” “The Gift” comprises the predictable lighters-aloft closer, and it works well, though let’s face it, it wouldn’t sound out of place on a Mike and the Mechanics record.
In the end, though, I’m not having Annie Lennox as a solo artist. It reeks of feel-good, post-Cold War, pre-War on Terror, messianic 90s brainwash, in stark contrast to the memorably pallid and inhospitable 80s stalagmites of Eurythmics’ oeuvre. “Why” and “Walking on Broken Glass” are great cinematic pop songs, and so too is “No More ‘I Love Yous’”, but none of it stacks up against “Sweet Dreams”, “Here Comes the Rain Again”, or “Who’s That Girl?”, if you want my humble opinion. Ultimately, Annie was best as Dave Stewart’s cyborg sidekick, designed in a lab to do the vocals for him, a bewitching Celtic Gary Numan with pipes. The soulful, suburban, mid-90s Yoga Mom on display here, however, is more than welcome to disappear into the dustbin of (the end of) history.
Overall rating: * * *
Standout track: “Walking on Broken Glass”