DOUBLEPLUSGOOD ➕➕

Annie are you ok? Are you ok, Annie?

For me, Annie Lennox is probably the most impressive Scottish human being of all-time that I can think of.

Unbelievably incredible artist and amazingly inspiring on the politics and worldview stance side of things too. Heart and soul in the right place for sure.

I wrote a thing a week or two before writing this about my experiences and influences Growing Up With Music as a youngster. In that I referenced the Eurythmics album, We Too Are One saying it was the only album of theirs in my family home growing up and it was maybe their worst.

I then reappraised over the weeks that followed to discover that it is absolutely and utterly immense. Sensational. Must have been the first time I’d listened to it since around age 13 or so.

Notable mentions to the dance/long version of King and Queen of America, See No Evil, How Long, We Two Are One (note the different spelling to album title) and Don’t Ask Me Why (don’t ask me why). All incredible, and the album easily up there and on a par with their other Long Playas. Top notch. Just shows ye…

There aren’t enough superlatives in the popular lexicon to account for the band’s overall artistic output, class and quality. Annie Lennox is our generation’s Joni Mitchell. Possibly better. She’s the white Grace Jones. Possibly better. She’s the female Bowie. Possibly better. Easily the best Lennox going after the bold Bobby Lennox. She’s not THAT good. Not many are. Buzz Bomb forever. One of Di Stefano’s favourites.

But anyway, back to it…

Her selected solo highlights (mostly early-to-mid 90s) and basically all the Eurythmics gear through the 80s and into 1990, easily make the Top Ten artists of all time for me. Proper next level musical capers. Comes in like a flood and it seems like religion.

HERO LEVELS.

Of all the amazing 80s synthy bands from the UK (let’s call them the synthesiser sympathisers), Eurythmics are the best of the lot in my book. The likes of Soft Cell, Yazoo, OMD, New Order, Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, Japan, Blancmange, Bronski Beat, Human League, Erasure, the Thompson Twins all occupying that realm. So yeah really saying something as these outfits all of a quite staggering and absolutely outstanding standard too.

That period was a golden age of inventiveness, experimentation and eccentricity in pop music, where the post-punk and DIY spirit of adventure, initiative and ingenuity merged with more sophisticated production and access to the means of producing with mercurial musical talent being celebrated in strange and left-of-centre ways.

A brave, bright and bold new world. A strange but amazing combination of super clinical and yet totally mental informing lots of the best creativity and production of the era.

It’s funny actually, because what was once the preserve of the elite - the elaborate production pomp and prog of the 70s - was a major defining factor for the punk explosion in the first instance. Punk was a stance against that elitism. Anyone can pick up a guitar, sniff some glue and go for it.

Then fast-forward a few years these high-production values end up, in a way, becoming the vital spark fuelling some (not all) of the best and most interesting post-punk and new wave music that followed in the 80s… albeit injected (or glued together) with an independent punk spirit and ethos. An angular observation. Hope it’s a sticky one for someone.

The band were also products of the Thatcher era - skint, on the dole and squatting in London. Initially Annie was in a punk band called The Catch, after dropping out of the Royal Academy of Music, then more famously The Tourists - who recorded a few albums and had a big hit with a cover of Dusty’s I Only Want To Be With You. A song called Useless Duration Of Time by them is also super ace. It’s a bit like The Pretenders meets XTC or something. Better than the Dusty cover, quite a bit better, IMO.

Prior to those two bands, she had a short stint as a flute player with a band called Dragon's Playground (with Brian "Dolph" Taylor - drummer of the Tom Robinson Band and Stiff Little Fingers in the years that followed). She left that band shortly before they appeared on the X Factor of its day, ‘New Faces’. Quick Side-note. My mum and dad’s best friends when they were teenager and 20-somethings also appeared on ‘New Faces’, they were called Redwood and got beaten in the NF final by some young comedian upstart called Jasper Carrott.

The legendary German electronic producer and pioneer Conny Plank was involved with some of The Tourists later material and was at the controls of the first Eurythmics album in 1981, after Annie and Dave left and set off on their own tour of sorts, as a duo, in the main. Separated and no longer a romantically involved couple by this point. That album, In The Garden, also features Blondie’s drummer Clem Burke and Can legends Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit.

Off to a strong start! It’s a great album but not my fave sound of theirs. Sing Sing is my top tune on it. It’s a bit like Stereolab, but better. As they grew and as their sound evolved it also improved, all-in-all, for me. Love bands who got or get better and better - not many of them. But yep as previously mentioned everything they crafted is pretty amazing. Well worth a deep dive. Rewarding in the extreme. All sorts!

So on that, and to the point, just so much incredible music. The big pop smashes that everyone will be familiar with are really just the tip of the iceberg. So much more to them than that. If you are unacquainted, a world of weird experimental madness awaits. Proper extravaganza of electronic experimentation.

Off-kilter b-sides, mad, super out-there samples, wonky and deep slo-mo belters, extended 12” dance anthems, poignant and powerful tearjerkers, buoyant love songs, house - all the great stuff, everything in between and more. Always deep and from the heart, even at their weirdest and most madcap and playful. Not just from the heart but a big heart, and a supremely talented one (or two) for that matter, too.

There is a playlist at bottom of these words, c. 5 hours of fun. Mostly on the more unexpected side of things but a few of the big hits too. Hard to argue with Love Is A Stranger, Here Comes The Rain Again and It’s Alright, Baby’s Coming Back. Not to mention a few of Annie’s solo masterpieces.

Lots of fun, weird, innovative, experimental electronic capers though in the main. Like I say, some banging and dancefloor ready and some more for the head than the feet. Their specific brand of assorted, varied and colourful aural wonders will do me nicely. Hard to beat the contents of their heads… and their feet. Pure dynamite.

1984 needs to get a special mention. WHAT A TUNE. It’s also the year I was born although I think the Sex Crime there must have been in 1983… at least I think that’s how these things work.

The B-side to that 12” - I Did It Just The Same - also an ABSOLUTE BANGER.

Doubleplusgood one of the other tracks on the oft-overlooked 1984: For The Love of Big Brother soundtrack album (which also features Sex Crime and I Did It Just The Same) also weapons grade firey-fire-fire.

Where’s the fire extinguisher when you need it. And how on earth does the bloody thing work? Bizarre tune but magnificent.

They won MTV’s Best New Artist award that same year. I’m pretty convinced and almost certain that all the best stuff came out in 1984. Music and all things otherwise. Even shoulder pads. The famous book not bad either. Don’t think my big brother’s read it.

In a similar way to Lou Reed or Bowie, Annie was also always playing with and subverting gender norms with agitational and situationist androgyny, long before this was common-place. Proper subversive stuff at the time.

The band split after We Too Are One and Annie took some time out, had a child and then 2 years later returned to the popular music forum with Diva. Sublime album. Why, Little Bird, Walking on Broken Glass, Money Can’t Buy It, Precious - tremendous piece of work.

A couple years later she knocks out Medusa. An album of cover versions. It’s off the scale as well. She covers my fave Bob Marley song, my fave Blue Nile song, my fave Clash song, Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale, Neil Young’s Don’t Let It Bring You Down and several others and somehow miraculously manages to equal if not improve on all of them in her own unique, compelling and ridiculously heartfelt way.

Authentically and respectfully making them her own. Something else. Mind blowing. Eurythmics covers of Lou Reed’s Satellite of Love and The Temptations’ Motown smash My Girl both mind-bendingly good as well, incidentally.

One mildly amusing anecdote for the road.

My best mate Stu Milne’s dad met Annie Lennox in Aberdeen, where she hails from and where he lived, in the early 70s and tried to pull her or chat her up a bit. In the pub. Before mega stardom. I think a student union dive or something like that. Bit of chat with her and all that. I understand she wasn’t having any of it though. SAVAGE indeed. Think they moved in the same circles for a bit many moons ago. Haha. Stu’s dad kinda weirdly similar to Dave Stewart in a way. Like a teuchtar version! Top egg much like his sons and no SHAME in getting a KB from the musical goddess that is Annie Lennox. Can’t win ‘em all.

Last point. The only thing I don’t like about Eurythmics is that I find their name really quite hard to type/spell. It takes me longer than it should to write it. Can’t think of any other word in the popular lexicon that gives me the same trouble. Always have a wee minor wobble at the r-y-t-h bit… Every single time.

There’s always something!

But not to worry. Nothing’s perfect. The collected works of Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics come pretty close though.

This Is The House, indeed.

Image at the very top above courtesy of the fantastic Captured By The Fuzz on Insta.

Thanks for your time and attention everyone - sweet dreams!

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