Eurythmics
Eurythmics
Rock duo
Influenced by Lennox’s Scottish “Soul”
One of the most successful pop acts to emerge in the 1980s, the British group Eurythmics combines the strong, often brooding, vocals and lyrics of Annie Lennox with the pop instrumentation and scoring talents of guitarist Dave Stewart. The duo burst onto the music scene in 1983 with their international hit-debut album, Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). And over the next nine years they released a string of hit recordings that demonstrated their trademark fine line between themes of passion and disdain, optimism and angst, and a music style which eventually nestled itself somewhere between New Wave synthesizer pop and American soul. Eurythmics’ compelling, almost at-odds, sound was complemented by their diverse stage and music video personalities, with the dynamic Lennox sporting a chameleon-like array of gender-bending image transformations, and Stewart often off to the side in the role of aloof and absorbed musician. Both the music and image of Eurythmics are reflected in the origins of their name, derived from the Greek term for the art of harmonious body movement, through an
For the Record…
Group formed in 1980, in London, England; members includeAnnie Lennox (born December 25, 1954, in Aberdeen, Scotland) andDave Stew
art (born c. 1952, in Sunderland, England). Lennox married Radha Rohnfeld, March 14, 1984 (divorced, 1985); married Uri Fruchtman (a filmmaker); one child from second marriage, and a daughter, Lola. Stewart’s first wife named Pam; currently married to Siobhan Fahey (a singer). Education: Lennox attended the Royal Academy of Music, London, early 1970s.
Lennox and Stewart formed group, The Tourists, 1978. Lennox appeared in film, Revolution, 1985.
Awards: Grammy Award nominations for best new artist, 1984, and for best rock performance by a duo or group, 1986.
Addresses: Record company —Arista, 6 West 57th St., New York, NY 10019.
expressive and synchronized response to improvised music.
Lennox’s and Stewart’s musical and personal partnership (they were lovers before Eurythmics) is belied by very different backgrounds. Born in the northern Scottish seaport of Aberdeen, Lennox was the daughter of a boilermaker who played the bagpipes, and grew up an only child in a small two-room tenement house. She played both piano and flute as a girl, and at seventeen was proficient enough to study flute at London’s Royal Academy of Music. Lennox became exasperated with the academy, however, and left before graduating. “I’d been taught that there was a perfect phrasing, a perfect sound, a perfect dynamics,” she told Freff in Musician. “But there is no perfect. The most perfecting this is to express yourself, totally, but nobody teaches you that.” To offset the academy’s rigors, Lennox began composing songs on a reed organ in her London flat and practiced singing. Already fond of the Scottish folk songs of her youth, Lennox discovered singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell and the soul music of Stevie Wonder. Once she listened to Wonder’s music under the effects of marijuana. “It was such a revelation to me to listen with very heightened senses to the music; it touched me,” she told Barbara Pepe in Ms. “It was something that in the future I wanted to aspire to, that depth of subtlety and profound statement through music.”
Dave Stewart, on the other hand, was born into a prosperous family in Sunderland, England, the son of an accountant and a bohemian mother who left her husband to become a writer and, eventually married a French Zen Buddhist. Stewart’s pre-Eurythmics music career was varied—to say the least. His early interests were medieval ballads and the songs of Bob Dylan, and at the age of fifteen, he stowed away in the van of the folk-rock group Amazing Blondels, travelling with the band for a time. He later worked as a guitarist for an off-shoot of the black African group, Osibisa, and as a composer-arranger for the Sadista Sisters (leaving his first wife to run off with one of the group members). In 1969, he was a guitarist for the group Longdancer, which obtained a contract with Elton John’s Rocket Records, only to break up after squandering most of their advance money on drugs. Stewart himself checked out on a year-long affair with LSD and was nearly fatally injured in a car crash in West Germany, surviving a major operation on a collapsed lung. He eventually cleaned up his act, ran a record store for a time, and teamed up with a singer-songwriter named Peet Coombs, who was looking for work in London. By the age of 25, as a Rolling Stone contributor writes, “Stewart was a walking jukebox with a past.”
From Tourists to Eurythmics
In the mid-1970s, Stewart and Coombs were dining in a London restaurant, where their waitress was Lennox, who was about to chuck her ambitions to be a singer-songwriter for a career as a music teacher. She invited them to her place, and the three struck up an immediate musical kinship; Stewart and Lennox soon after became lovers. The trio formed a group called Catch, which by 1978 came to be called The Tourists, a folk-pop group. The Tourists released three moderately successful albums, and had a British top-five single with their cover of an old Dusty Springfield record, “I Only Want to Be with You.” Disputes with their recording label, however, led The Tourists to break up in the 1980s, and Lennox and Stewart likewise dissolved their personal relationship. The two decided to continue working together as musicians, however, and named themselves Eurythmics. Stewart remarked to a Rolling Stone interviewer: “We are the only couple I know that lived together and then virtually on the week we stop living together we form Eurythmics and become famous as a couple. Usually it is the other way around.”
Eurythmics’ first album, In the Garden, was recorded in a West German studio. Further troubles with record management, however, led Stewart and Lennox to construct their own studio, which they installed in a warehouse attic and eventually moved to a sixteenth-century church in the Crouch End section of London. “The Church,” as it was known, became a meeting place for local musicians, and Stewart began experimenting with recording equipment, synthesizers, various instruments, and an array of unlikely musical sounds. Eurythmies’ second album, Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), was entirely recorded and mixed in their private studio, and incorporated such sounds as the roar of a subway train, voices of people in their neighborhood, and musical pitches from water-filled milk bottles. Two singles off the album, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” and “Love Is a Stranger,” became international hits, and Eurythmics were on their way to becoming pop superstars. The title track, bolstered by its video, combined an alternating husky and piercing Lennox vocal and ruminating lyrics, with a catchy New Wave-pop and funk-influenced score by Stewart. The song displayed what would become vintage Eurythmics. As Stewart explained to Stephen Holden in the New York Times: “In our music we like to have the sense of two things battling at once. You have to have something that sounds nice on the surface, but underneath there’s an ominous side.” Lennox concurred, adding that “most really inspired music has a kind of friction about it. There’s an element of danger, of roughness and crudeness that goes along with something very melodic.”
Launched World Tour
1984 was a busy year for Eurythmics. Their second album, Touch, was released and had more hit singles, including “Here Comes the Rain Again,” “Right By Your Side,” and “Who’s That Girl?” On an extensive world tour in early 1984, Lennox developed what would become a recurring problem with nodes on her vocal cords, and had to rest her voice as much as possible. The same year, Lennox startled many when she performed on the 1984 Grammy Awards—Eurythmics were nominated for Best New Artist—and sang “Sweet Dreams” dressed in Elvis Presley garb, complete with sideburns. Coupled with their music videos, in which Lennox sported short-cropped, orange-dyed hair, a haughty demeanor, and mannish clothes, Eurythmics became as famous for their music as for what Holden described as a look of “elegant transvestitism.” Lennox explained to Rolling Stone that her androgynous look was intended to “detract from what people had come to expect from women singers…. Ironically, a different kind of sexuality emerged from that. I wasn’t particularly concerned with bending genders. I simply wanted to get away from wearing cutesy-pie miniskirts and tacky cutaway push-ups.”
Influenced by Lennox’s Scottish “Soul”
Future Eurythmics’ albums showed an increasing influence of soul. 1985’s Be Yourself Tonight included a feminist anthem duet with “queen of soul” Aretha Franklin, entitled “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves,” while another track, “There Must Be an Angel,” featured Stevie Wonder on a harmonica solo. Although many reviewers in the past commented on an iciness in Eurythmies’ music, particularly Lennox’s vocals, their music on Be Yourself Tonight and subsequent albums displays a continual warming up of styles, and a confidence in approach. Regarding 1986’s Revenge, Jon Young in Musician wrote that Eurythmics have an ability “to make records sound good.” Stewart “uses studio smarts to construct tracks that are models of streamlined efficiency,” while Lennox “takes firm command of a melody from the very first line.” Commenting on the 1988 album Savage, Ken Richardson wrote in High Fidelity: “The tick-tock of technology remains, but Dave Stewart works a lot of human touches into the mix…. And Annie Lennox, though still showing off her impeccable vocal technique, gives warmth a chance and, equally welcome, sings bare for a spell.”
Lennox’s wide-ranging and expressive voice has often been singled out as one of the strong points of the Eurythmics’ sound. Describing herself as coming from an “earthy” working-class Scottish family, Lennox commented to Rolling Stone on the “soul” of her music. “I suppose it’s all to do with people who have some knowledge of poverty—the struggle.… I can’t say that I really know the black experience, but there’s something in knowing about the rich and poor and the differences in class and not being able to get this and that.” Reviewers have noted a Scottish strain of melancholia permeating Lennox’s lyrics as well, even in her most upbeat moments. Stewart commented in Rolling Stone that “certain people have the feeling—it’s a kind of angst. And Annie has it. It’s the way they approach things. That is soul, and there’s a lot of soul in Scottish folk songs. It’s very passionate stuff.”
Parted But Not Disbanded
Eurythmics’ 1990 album, We Too Are One, turned out to be their last, at least temporarily, as the following year Lennox and Stewart took a break from working together. “We just need to go away and do something different,” she told Mat Snow in Q. “We’ve been through such a lot and never had a break, like a divorced couple that want to be apart, though when we split up as a couple, we knew we still wanted to be in a group. Wanting to make music was what kept us together. But now we need space if we’re not to destroy the goodwill that exists between us.” The future of Eurythmics is unclear, and their last album, according to a Stereo Review contributor, “doesn’t represent any bold new developments.” Instead, “it reaffirms the talent and ability of one of rock’s most captivating duos.”
Selected discography
In the Garden, RCA (United Kingdom), 1982.
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) (includes “Sweet Dreams [Are Made of This]” and “Love Is a Stranger”), RCA, 1983.
Touch (includes “Here Comes the Rain Again,” “Right by Your Side,” and “Who’s That Girl”), RCA, 1984.
Be Yourself Tonight (includes “Would I Lie to You?” and “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves”), RCA, 1985.
Revenge (includes “Missionary Man”), RCA, 1986.
Savage (includes “I Need a Man”), RCA, 1988.
We Too Are One (includes “Revival” and “Angel”), Arista, 1989.
Greatest Hits, RCA, 1991.
Other
Eurythmics Live (video recording), Polygram, 1987.
(Lennox as contributor) Red Hot & Blue, Chrysalis, 1990.
Greatest Hits (video recording), BMG, 1991.
Sources
Books
Contemporary Newsmakers, 1985 cumulative edition, Gale, 1986.
Hill, Dave, Designing Boys and Material Girls: Manufacturing the ’80s Pop Dream, Blandford Press, 1986.
Stambler, Irwin, The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock and Soul, revised edition, St. Martin’s, 1989.
White, Timothy, Rock Stars, Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, 1984.
Periodicals
Creem, July 1984; August 1985; September 1985; December 1986.
High Fidelity, May 1988.
Los Angeles Times, August 2, 1986.
Melody Maker, January 29, 1983; July 9, 1983; November 19, 1983; May 4, 1985; November 22, 1986.
Ms., February 1986.
Musician, November 1983; July 1985; November 1985; August 1986.
New Yorker, March 14, 1988.
New York Times, July 17, 1983; February 5, 1984; August 3, 1984; September 3, 1989; November 12, 1989.
People, December 19, 1983; May 20, 1985; November 27, 1989.
Q, May 1991.
Rolling Stone, September 29, 1983; June 20, 1985; October 24, 1985; September 11, 1986.
Stereo Review, January 1990.
—Michael E. Mueller
Eurythmics
Eurythmics
Pop duo
Throughout much of the 1980s, Eurythmies were one of the most popular music acts in the world. Combining the production and instrumental talents of Dave Stewart with the soulful voice and provocative stage presence of Annie Lennox, the duo outlasted many other synthesizer-laced New Wave bands that cropped up at around the same time. Eurythmics delved increasingly into their soul and rhythm & blues roots as time went on, while Lennox’s creative use of androgyny on stage and in videos kept audiences fascinated. By 1990, though, their popularity had started to wane, and the two quietly decided to stop recording and performing together, going their separate ways. In 1999, though, a reunion to record one song for a greatest hits album found them collaborating so successfully that they produced Peace, their first new album in nearly a decade.
Their vastly different backgrounds made their eventual collaboration, let alone their success, sound unlikely. Lennox grew up in Scotland and moved to London to attend the Royal Academy of Music to study flute. Stewart, on the other hand, ran away from home as a teenager to work for and occasionally play with a folk-rock band. When they met in a London restaurant, Lennox was waiting tables after having left the Royal Academy because she felt uncomfortable with the school’s pretensions. Stewart was dining with his song-writing collaborator at the time, Peet Coombes, having just left his band Longdancer following a car accident in which he had suffered lung injuries. According to Lennox, Stewart’s first words to her were, “Will you marry me?” Whether true or not, the two quickly struck up a romance.
They also formed a musical partnership. Along with Coombes they started a band called the Tourists in 1977. Over the course of two years, they released three albums. They achieved some commercial success, with their version of “I Only Want to Be With You” climbing to number four on the British pop charts. The Tourists also lived up to their name, traveling around the world to perform, only to disband while in Bangkok, Thailand. Lennox and Stewart’s romance ended at about the same time.
No longer a couple, the two decided that musically they could still work well together. They came up with the idea of Eurythmies, taking the name from a late nineteenth-century method of teaching music to children through movement. Their original notion was that they would form the core that would write for and perform with shifting combinations of supporting players. They took their idea to Germany and began writing in a studio owned by Conny Plank, the producer for the German synthesizer group Kraftwerk. The sessions resulted in In the Garden, released in the United Kingdom in 1981 to little fanfare. Having more of a mechanical electronic music sound than the soulful rhythms that would mark their later work, the album
For the Record…
Members include Annie Lennox (born on December 25, 1954, in Aberdeen, Scotland; married Uri Fruchtman, 1988; two children), vocals, flute; Dave Stewart (born David Allan Stewart on September 9, 1952, in Sunderland, England; married Siobhan Fahey, 1987; two children), guitar, keyboards, vocals.
Formed first band, the Tourists, 1977; formed Eurythmies and released first album, 1981; released multi-platinum album Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), 1983; performed soundtrack for the movie 1984, 1984; released We Two are One, their last album before 10-year hiatus, 1989; performed together again in public for the first time, 1998; reunited for new album, Peace, 1999.
Awards: BRIT Awards, Lifetime Achievement Award, 1999.
Addresses: Record compary; —Arista Records, 6 W. 5th St., New York, New York 10019. Website— http://www.eurythmies.net.
went nowhere, and their tour in support of it resulted in illness for both Lennox and Stewart.
Eurythmies Had Sweet Dreams
When they went back into the studio for their next effort, they did so in one built in a warehouse by Stewart. The lush arrangements remained, produced on an eight-track recorder. Yet a new element emerged, one that made a commercial and critical success of Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) in 1983. Justin Lewis described what made the album stand out in Rock: The Rough Guide: “The music had hit a chord: contemporary and hugely catchy, it was synth-and production-driven, yet it had a soul, melancholy, and personal.” The title track shot to the top of the charts, hitting number one in the United States and number two in the United Kingdom.
Eurythmies didn’t rest on their laurels, and later that year released their third album, Touch. Again, they had a hit on their hands, enhanced by the videos that they released in support of the songs. MTV had just come into existence, and the Eurythmies took advantage of the new medium to showcase Lennox’s presence and her provocative gender-bending performances. The video for “Who’s That Girl” from Touch featured her in both a male and a female role, and through special effects her characters kiss at video’s end. Lennox also made waves by dressing as a man for a performance at the 1984 Grammy Awards ceremony.
Not every project Eurythmies touched turned out successfully, though. Enlisted to write and perform the music for a new movie production of the George Orwell novel 1984, their differences with the director led to much of their work getting left out of the film. Still, they released a soundtrack album, 1984: For the Love of Big Brother. The single “Sexcrime” made the top ten in the United Kingdom, but received little air play in the United States. Many radio stations refused to put it on, deeming the subject matter too controversial. That same year the duo also had differences with their record label when RCA issued the EP Touch Dance. Consisting of remixes of earlier songs, it was released in spite of the duo’s objections.
The events of 1984 turned out to be minor irritants instead of career setbacks. Their 1985 album Be Yourself Tonight spawned such hit singles as “Would I Lie to You” and “Sisters are Doin’ It for Themselves.” The latter featured soul legend Aretha Franklin singing with Lennox, a collaboration that typified two important elements of the album. It featured appearances by a wide range of guest performers, including Elvis Costello and Daryl Hall. The songs themselves also showcased Eurythmics’s return to their roots in the soul sounds of the 1960s. 1986’s Revenge saw a shift again to other roots, rocking harder than their previous work. While the album sold less in the United States than their previous ones, in Europe it racked up more sales than any of their earlier releases.
Other Career Options Explored
Both Lennox and Stewart took advantage of Eurythmics’s success to work without each other in realms other than playing music. Lennox made her acting debut with a part in the 1985 film Revolution, while Stewart worked as a producer for Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, and Tom Petty, among others. Still, the duo kept going as Eurythmies, releasing Savage in 1987. The album, with more of a disco style than their previous two, didn’t go over very well and showed that they had passed their peak of popularity. While 1989’s We Too Are One spawned their first American hit (“Don’t Ask Me Why”) since “Missionary Man” from Be Yourself Tonight, it would prove to be what both members thought of as the end of Eurythmies.
The breakup of the band took place quietly, with no public rancor. Lennox retreated to her home to write songs and give birth to her first child, while Stewart continued producing and took up writing movie soundtracks. Reflecting on their song writing process, Lennox told David Gates of Esquire, “I was the one wandering around saying, ‘Never, never, never, ’ and he’d be going, ‘Oh, come on this is great.’” While this interplay between the pessimist and optimist had been fruitful, Lennox went to say that it became “a struggle for us to be in the room together.” For his part, Stewart told Jeremy Helligar of People,” You’re tied together, and it comes to a point where you just need space. Still, I think she’s a great songwriter. That’s why we spent so long together.”
While Lennox began recording her own solo work within three years of the breakup, releasing the album Diva in 1992, it took Stewart longer to start recording on his own. At one point he even spent six weeks in a psychiatric hospital in order to get his confidence up, telling Helligar, “I had never done my own album because of insecurity and self-doubt.” After working with a band called the Spiritual Cowboys for a few years, he finally put out his first solo album, Greetings from the Gutter, in 1995. While Lennox enjoyed considerable success with her solo albums, including a Grammy Award for 1995’s Medusa, Stewart’s didn’t fare so well.
A Surprise Reunion
Although the two were out of touch during the mid 1990s, they got together to perform as a surprise at a party for a friend in 1998. After that, they played their first public gig in years at a tribute concert for a British journalist. When they received a Lifetime Achievement award at the BRIT Awards ceremony in 1999, they decided that they should also write together again, agreeing to create one new song for a greatest hits album. They found they couldn’t do just one, though. Stewart told Larry Flick of Billboard, “We ended up writing four or five songs in a few days. Soon we realized it sounded like an album. We went into the studio and immediately started recording.”
The resulting album, Peace, garnered mixed reviews, often eliciting comments about the quality of the whole but noting the absence of any remarkable songs like the duo’s past hits. Barry Walters of Rolling Stone wrote, “Peace charms with repeated listenings, but its well-crafted down-tempo musings lack the old urgency,” while David Gates in Newsweek noted, “Stewart’s production sounds richer and more organic… and Lennox sounds warmer and more expressive. Still, the new songs mostly lack the transcendent strangeness of … old Eurythmies hits….” The record-buying public evidently didn’t share this concern, especially in Europe, where the album reached the Top Ten charts in several countries, although it peaked at number 25 in the United States.
Just as reviewers inevitably compared the new album to Eurythmics’s past work, Lennox and Stewart revisited their past with the album’s first single, “Seventeen Again.” The song traced the arc of their career from first meeting to breakup, commenting on their past work along the way. As far as the future was concerned, they had no definite plans for the Eurythmies beyond a tour to benefit Amnesty International and Greenpeace. Clearly, though, the two of them were glad to be working together again. Lennox struggled to explain to Flick how they collaborated, calling the process “an unexplainable, almost psychic way of making music. … I don’t question it anymore, nor do I wonder how long it will work. I’m just grateful every time it happens.”
Selected discography
Eurythmies
In the Garden, RCA, 1981.
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), RCA, 1983.
Touch, RCA, 1983.
Touch Dance, RCA, 1984.
1984: For the Love of Big Brother (soundtrack), RCA, 1984.
Be Yourself Tonight, RCA, 1985.
Revenge, RCA, 1986.
Savage, RCA, 1987.
We Too Are One, Arista, 1989.
Greatest Hits, RCA, 1991.
Eurythmies Live 1983-89, RCA, 1993.
Greatest Hits, BMG International, 1998.
Peace, Arista, 1999.
The Tourists
Tourists, Logo, 1979.
Reality Effect, Epic, 1980.
Luminous Basement, RCA, 1980.
Annie Lennox solo
Diva, Arista, 1992.
Medusa, Arista, 1995.
Dave Stewart solo
Lily Was Here (soundtrack), Arista, 1990.
Greetings from the Gutter, East West, 1995.
Sources
Books
Buckley, Jonathan and Mark Ellingham, editors, Rock: The Rough Guide, Penguin, 1996.
Clarke, Donald, editor, The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Penguin, 1989.
Larkin, Colin, editor, The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Muze, 1998.
Romanowski, Patricia and Holly George-Warren, editors, The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, Fireside, 1995.
Stambler, Irwin, editor, Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock& Soul, St. Martin’s, 1989.
Periodicals
Billboard, October 2, 1999, p. 5; October 30, 1999, p. 18.
Esquire, July 1992, p. 82.
Newsweek, October 25, 1999, p. 82.
People, March 13, 1995, p. 21.
Rolling Stone, October 14, 1999, p. 36; November 25, 1999, p. 98; December 16-23, p. 236.
Online
“Eurythmies,” All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (September 21, 2000).
—Lloyd Hemingway
Eurythmics
Eurythmics
Eurythmics, dynamic English duo that turned creative tension into great pop music. MEMBERSHIP: Annie Lennox, voc., kybd., fit. (b. Aberdeen, Scotland, Dec. 25, 1954); David Stewart, kybd., gtr., synth. (b. Aug. 9, 1952).
Dave Stewart met Annie Lennox while she was studying at the Royal Academy of Music and supporting herself as a waitress. Stewart was between bands and working on songs with guitarist Peet Coombes. One night Lennox served Stewart and Coombes dinner, and Stewart proposed to her on the spot. Lennox and Stewart became lovers and, together with Coombes, became the nucleus of a group called the Tourists. The band released three records in the two years they were together, creating an updated version of the Byrds’s sound with Lennox’s imposing personality and voice up front. They met with middling success in England and were widely ignored in the U.S.
Stewart and Lennox discovered they were such opposites they really couldn’t go on seeing each other personally. Around the same time, the Tourists broke up. Ironically, now that they weren’t together romantically, Stewart and Lennox discovered that they could write together. They decided to continue performing together, taking the name Eurythmics from the famous early 20th century movement analyst, Emile JaquesDalcroze. They recorded their debut, In the Garden, in Germany with members of the progressive synthesizer-based band Can, along with Blondie drummer Clem Burke. It didn’t sell well on either side of the Atlantic.
Deciding to give it one more shot, Stewart set up a home studio and he and Lennox recorded Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), continuing in the electro-pop vein. Although the initial single, “Love Is a Stranger” didn’t make much noise when released in advance of the album, the title track exploded on both sides of the Atlantic, largely thanks to its slightly gender-bending video. (In one sequence, Lennox appeared with close-cropped, bright orange-dyed hair, in a man’s suit, and holding a riding crop.) The single topped the U.S. charts and went gold. The re-released “Love Is a Stranger” was also successful, reaching #23. The album also went gold.
Fueled by this success, they recorded Touch. The album spun off the hits “Here Comes the Rain Again,” which rose to #4. “Who’s That Girl” rose to #21 and “Right By Your Side” charted at #29. The album went platinum and topped out at #7. They also cut the music for the soundtrack to the film 1984. However, the director opted instead for more traditional movie music by Dominic Muldowny and used only their song “Sex-crime.” The film stiffed, as did the duo’s soundtrack album. Too many radio stations in the States found the song “Sexcrime” objectionable, but it did hit #10 in England.
The band rebounded with 1985’s Be Yourself Tonight. Lennox duetted soulfully with Aretha Franklin on “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves,” which hit #18. “Would I Lie to You” hit #5 and “There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)” rose to #22. The album went platinum and went to #9.
If nothing else, the follow-up, 1986’s Revenge, followed the soul path even harder. However, the single “Missionary Man” only reached #14, and the album topped out at #14, going gold. With the group starting to lose commercial steam, Stewart took the production chops he’d honed with the Eurythmics and the Tourists and plied them for Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan, among others. Lennox tried some acting in the film Revolution and the TV movie The Room.
While they remained popular at home, their next album, 1987’s Savage, only reached #41 on the U.S. charts, with no singles reaching the Top 40. Lennox, however, had a #9 hit duetting with Al Green on “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” on the soundtrack to the film Scrooged. Their 1989 album, We Too Are One reached #34 and spawned their first single in three years, “Don’t Ask Me Why,” which spent a disappointing week at #40, despite the album topping the charts in England.
While Eurythmics never officially disbanded, Lennox went on to record two double-platinum solo albums, Diva and Medusa. Diva offered the #34 hit “Why” and the #14 “Walking on Broken Glass” in 1992. The song was propelled by a nifty video in which Lennox appeared in full Renaissance regalia. The album rose to #27 in the U.S., and topped the English charts. Her 1995 Medusa, an album of covers, rose to #11 in the U.S., again topping the English charts on the strength of the single “No More I Love You’s” and the overall quality of the songs. Stewart released several projects that didn’t generate a great deal of excitement, including his Spiritual Cowboys band, which recorded a pair of records in 1990 and 1991. He did however continue as an in-demand producer, working with artists ranging from lite-jazz sax player Candy Dulfer to hard-pop artist Jon Bon Jovi. His Sly-Fi album was initially issued solely on the Internet in the U.S., taking advantage of the thennascent form of music distribution. He also got into filmmaking, directing the movie Honest.
In the summer of 1999, the band announced they would return with an album and a tour. All proceeds from the tour were to go to Greenpeace and Amnesty International.
Discography
In the Garden (1981), Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)(1983), Touch (1983), Touch Dance (1984), 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother) (1984), Be Yourself Tonight (1985), Revenge (1986), Savage (1987), We Too Are One (1989), Live 1983–1989 (1993), Greatest Hits (1998).
—Hank Bordowitz
eurhythmics
Stuart Judge
See ballet; music and the body.