Annie Lennox
Ann Lennox is a Scottish singer-songwriter, political activist and philanthropist. After achieving moderate success in the late 1970s as part of the new wave band the Tourists, she and fellow musician Dave Stewart went on to achieve international success in the 1980s as Eurythmics. When she appeared in the 1983 music video for "Sweet Dreams " with orange cropped hair and wearing a man's lounge suit, the BBC wrote, "all eyes were on Annie Lennox, the singer whose powerful androgynous look defied the male gaze". Subsequent hits with Eurythmics include "There Must Be an Angel ", "Love Is a Stranger" and "Here Comes the Rain Again".
Lennox embarked on a solo career in 1992 with her debut album, Diva, which produced several hit singles including "Why" and "Walking on Broken Glass". The same year, she performed "Love Song for a Vampire" for Bram Stoker's Dracula. Her 1995 studio album Medusa includes cover versions of songs such as "No More 'I Love You's and "A Whiter Shade of Pale". To date, she has released six solo studio albums and a compilation album, The Annie Lennox Collection. With eight Brit Awards, which includes being named Best British Female Artist a record six times, Lennox has been named the "Brits Champion of Champions". She has also collected four Grammy Awards and an MTV Video Music Award. In 2002, Lennox received a Billboard Century Award; the highest accolade from Billboard. In 2004, she received the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Into the West", written for the soundtrack to the feature film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Lennox's vocal range is contralto. She has been named "The Greatest White Soul Singer Alive" by VH1 and one of The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time by Rolling Stone. In June 2013, the Official Charts Company called her "the most successful female British artist in UK music history". By June 2008, including her work with Eurythmics, Lennox had sold over 80 million records worldwide. As part of a one-hour symphony of British Music, Lennox performed "Little Bird" during the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony in London. At the 2015 Ivor Novello Awards Lennox was made a fellow of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, the first woman to receive the honour. Lennox and her Eurythmics partner Dave Stewart were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2020, and the duo were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.
Lennox is also a political and social activist, raising money and awareness for HIV/AIDS as it affects women and children in Africa. She founded the Sing campaign in 2007 and founded a women's empowerment charity called The Circle in 2008. In 2011 Lennox was appointed an OBE by Queen Elizabeth II for her "tireless charity campaigns and championing of humanitarian causes". On 4 June 2012 she performed at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert in front of Buckingham Palace. In 2017, Lennox was appointed Glasgow Caledonian University's first female chancellor.
Early life
Lennox was born on Christmas Day 1954 in Torry, Aberdeen, Scotland. She is the daughter of Dorothy Farquharson and Thomas Allison Lennox.Lennox went to the Aberdeen High School for Girls where she was encouraged by her parents to explore her artistic qualities. She excelled at music, poetry and artwork. Here she learned to play the flute and the piano. She also sang in the choir and later played in symphony orchestras and military bands, and each year took part in the Aberdeen Music Festival. Lennox attended Dalcroze eurhythmics classes while at high school. Eurhythmics, with its English spelling, is an approach to music education developed by the Swiss composer Emile Jaques-Dalcroze. The word eurhythmics is derived from Greek and means "good flow". The band, Eurythmics, adopted the French spelling.
File:Royal Academy of Music London.jpg|thumb|The Royal Academy of Music in London, where Lennox abandoned her classical studies in the early 1970s. She became a Fellow of the Academy in 2007 and was awarded an honorary doctorate from its affiliated college, the University of London, in 2017.
In 1971, Lennox began studying on a three-year Music Performance degree course at the Royal Academy of Music in London. It is one of a small number of quite elite British music conservatories predominantly for classical music study at third level. At college in London she studied flute, piano and harpsichord for nearly three years. Although Lennox studied for close to the duration of the course she did not finish her studies at the college. She found the amount of time devoted to music practice required to become a professional classical musician obsessive and felt that she was unconnected with the "whole cultural aspect". Lennox lived on a student grant and worked at part-time jobs for extra money. She was unhappy with the direction she was going in and doubted her own talent when compared to her student contemporaries while at the Royal Academy and deliberated on what other direction she could take.
Lennox's flute teacher's final report stated: "Ann has not always been sure of where to direct her efforts, though lately she has been more committed. She is very, very able, however." Two years later, Lennox reported to the academy: "I have had to work as a waitress, barmaid and shop assistant to keep me when not in musical work." Lennox attended the Dalcroze eurhythmics Spring Course of 1974. She also played and sang with a few bands, such as Windsong, during the period of her course.
In 2017, the academy awarded her an honorary degree of Doctorate. In her acceptance speech of her honorary Doctorate, Lennox said, "Many of my life experiences can be described as unconventional, idiosyncratic and synchronistic—as this event proves to be no exception. By rights, I feel I'm not entitled to be here—but as John Lennon once famously said... 'Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans.
Career
1976–1990: Dragon's Playground, the Tourists and Eurythmics
In 1976, Lennox was a flute player with a band called Dragon's Playground, leaving before they appeared on ITV's talent show New Faces. From 1977 to 1980, she was the lead singer of the Tourists, a British pop band and her first collaboration with Dave Stewart.Lennox and Stewart's second collaboration, the 1980s synth-pop duo Eurythmics, resulted in her most notable fame, as the duo's alto, soul-tinged lead singer. Early in Eurythmics' career, Lennox was known for her androgyny, wearing suits and once impersonating Elvis Presley. Eurythmics released a long line of hit singles in the 1980s, including "Sweet Dreams ", "There Must Be an Angel ", "Love Is a Stranger", "Here Comes the Rain Again", "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves", "Who's That Girl?", "Would I Lie to You?", "Missionary Man", "You Have Placed a Chill in My Heart", "Thorn in My Side", "The Miracle of Love" and "Don't Ask Me Why". Although Eurythmics never officially disbanded, Lennox made a fairly clear break from Stewart in 1990. Thereafter, she began her solo career.
Lennox and Stewart reconvened Eurythmics in the late 1990s, resulting in the 1999 release of Peace, the band's first album of new material in ten years. A subsequent concert tour was completed, with profits going to Greenpeace and Amnesty International. Lennox has received eight Brit Awards, including being named Best British Female Artist a record six times. Four of the awards were given during her time with Eurythmics, and another was given to the duo for Outstanding Contribution to Music in 1999.
The 1988 single "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" was a duet with Al Green recorded for the soundtrack of the movie Scrooged. Though it was produced by Dave Stewart, it was credited to Lennox and Green. This one-off single peaked at No. 9 on the US Billboard Hot 100, 6 in Australia, and was a top 40 hit in the UK. Lennox performed the song "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye", a Cole Porter song, that same year for a cameo appearance in the Derek Jarman film Edward II. She then appeared with David Bowie and the surviving members of Queen at 1992's Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at London's Wembley Stadium, performing "Under Pressure".
1992–1993: Solo career and ''Diva''
Lennox began working with former Trevor Horn protégé Stephen Lipson, beginning with her 1992 solo debut album, Diva. During an interview with the BBC in 1992 ahead of the release of the album, Lennox claimed that she debated with herself whether to begin writing a solo album, claiming that she thought of other things she could do but concluded "it all comes back to writing songs", stating that songwriting "affirms who I am" and acknowledging being a songwriter as "part of my identify". Lennox claimed that, during the songwriting process for Diva, she did "not miss Dave ", claiming that they both "spent so much time together it became frayed". She did, however, state that she wishes Dave well and that she was "sure he would say the same for me".Diva charted at No. 1 in the UK, No. 7 in Australia, No. 6 in Germany, and No. 23 in the US where it went double platinum. Lennox's profile was boosted by Diva singles, which included "Why" and "Walking on Broken Glass". "Why" won an MTV Award for Best Female Video at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, while the video for "Walking on Broken Glass", set in the Rococo period, featured actors Hugh Laurie and John Malkovich. "Little Bird" also formed a double A-side with "Love Song for a Vampire", a soundtrack cut for Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 movie Bram Stoker's Dracula. The B-side of her single "Precious" was a self-penned song called "Step by Step", which was later a hit for Whitney Houston for the soundtrack of the film The Preacher's Wife. The song "Keep Young and Beautiful" was included on the CD release as a bonus track.
The album entered the UK album chart at no.1 and has since sold over 1.2 million copies in the UK alone, being certified quadruple platinum. It was also a success in the US where it was a top 30 hit and has sold in excess of 2.7 million copies. In 1993, the album was included in Q magazine's list of the "50 Best Albums of 1992". Rolling Stone magazine described the album as "...state-of-the-art soul pop..." and it is included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's" list. The album won Best British Album at the 1993 Brit Awards.