Like shards from a shattered mirror, Annie Lennox’s new album ‘Bare’, glitters with reflective surfaces and sharp edges. Careful how you pick up each song. A cut, a rush of blood may remind you of long forgotten wounds, of scars you thought had healed, of heartaches you thought you had soothed with the balm of time passing.

In one of the album’s most stunning songs, ‘Pavement Cracks’, Annie sings, ‘Love don’t show up in the pavement cracks, All my water colours fade to black, I’m going nowhere and I’m ten steps back’. Such darkness from one who sang the cheerful ‘Sweet dreams are made of this’? What inspired Annie to write it?

‘Children have such an instinctive way of reacting to the world. They skip because they’re happy. They delight in the moment. We lose that freshness as we grow. Life knocks it out of us. Yet still, there’s this miraculous capacity for new growth. In my darkest times, I’d walk with my head bowed, seeing only the cracks in the pavement slabs. But then I’d notice the weeds pushing up through them, like a metaphor for hope. Change comes, even when it seems it won’t.’

Changes, dramatic changes, have been signposts in Annie’s life. Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, on Christmas Day 1954. An only child, her mother (Dorothy) was a cook and her father (Tom) a boilermaker. Her parents supported her artistic interests — poetry, music and drawing. In school, she learnt to play the piano, flute, and also sang in the choir. She even attended the dance classes of Marguerite Feltges who, interestingly, introduced pupils to a form of Greek Dance known as ‘Eurhythmics’!

The New Rulers
Even then she knew that her life would chart the adventurous course of a singer. In the late ‘70s in London, Annie met Dave Stewart. The two became lovers and after a couple of false starts, decided to call themselves Eurhythmics. A new sound and a sure fire formula, gave the world the amazing, ‘Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This’.

Straight in at number one in the world charts, the sales of the song were helped enormously by its stylish, androgynous video. The beautifully cheek boned girl with short cropped hair, who could have been a boy, became the darling of millions. Among their initial fans were a lot of gays, lesbians and bisexuals, eager to have an icon who was not bound by barriers. As they released hit after hit, it quickly became clear that the mainstream had made them their darlings too.

Songs like ‘Love Is A Stranger’, ‘Who’s That Girl’, ‘Right By Your Side’ and ‘Here Comes The Rain Again’ made them virtual rulers of the pop charts. By 1984, Annie’s gender bending in a theatrical style had become notorious, which only helped record sales.

A Woman Transformed
In 1984, following a gig, Annie met Radha Raman — a Hare Krishna Monk. Impressed by his personality and spiritual beliefs, they ended up marrying in March 1984 and went to live in Switzerland away from the spotlight. The marriage did not survive 1985. After a decade of superstardom, the Eurhythmics decided to call it quits in 1990. Annie was a huge star and Dave, a rich producer. At the height of their career, why commit hara kiri?

‘Fame has been very destructive to my own personal happiness. I’ve been unable to call anywhere home, unable to mix with other people in normal circumstances. I’ve felt very much a loner, an outsider looking in on life,’ said Annie in a typically frank interview. Annie got married, this time to a documentary film maker and when her baby daughter Lola was born, she became a woman transformed. ‘Someone did tell me that when you have children, you fall in love all over again, but it is a different kind of love.

It’s unconditional and so strong and boundless, it’s almost scary.’ One wondered then how motherhood would affect her. An artiste who had always said that her most creative moments stemmed from personal unhappiness. Pretty soon they had their answer. In her debut album ‘Diva’, Annie married her marvellous voice to memorable songs that mapped the soul of a modern woman. ‘I’ve shed my tears in bitter drops, Until the thorn trees bloomed, To take the spiky fruit to crown, Myself the Queen of doom’, she sang in ‘Legend In My Living Room’.

What was absolutely chilling were these words from the song ‘Cold’, ‘Dying is easy, It’s living that scares me to death’. In 1999, she joined forces once again with Dave Stewart to release ‘Peace’. In their hit single, she sang, ‘All those fake celebrities and all those vicious queens, All the stupid papers and all the stupid magazines, and it feels like I’m 17 again.’ She is no longer 17, nor would we want her to be. She is 48, and her vocal pipes are in fine fettle, thank you.

Stripped Bare...
As is evident in her latest offering ‘Bare’. She sings as though she is at last letting down her guard. Revealing herself in a whole new way, and exhibiting her photography for the first time. ‘I think, in a way, it is the antithesis of glamour,’ Lennox as she previewed her photo exhibit of 30 self-portraits in New York.

She got so fed up with celebrity that she swore she’d never do another photo shoot, so she started taking photographs of herself. ‘Even as young girls, as children, we are encouraged to look pretty. So I thought, ‘Do I try to compete with this youth market culture that I’m in, or do I go the opposite way and show my fragilities, expose the fact that my skin is getting older?’

Unadorned, poignant lyrics continue to be the king, ruling in Lennox’s fascinating world of damaged hearts and soured relationships. ‘Bare’ proves that the queen’s throat is still brave and strong. She takes risks like no one else would. The mirror may remain shattered, but the reflection of each shard is still beautiful.

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