She’s just trying to work things out
London — So there’s pop music: the finger-popping, feel-good wonder stuff we dance and party to -- and hallelujah that we came up with it. And here’s that other thing that’s always been around in the darker corners of popular culture’s big old tent, the kind of songs that make us stop, feel the moment more deeply and, generally, wonder what life’s all about -- like the ones on Annie Lennox’s third solo album, “Bare,†due in stores June 10 and to be previewed at her sold-out Royce Hall concert Tuesday.
Written and recorded in the aftermath of her 12-year marriage to Israeli filmmaker Uri Fruchtman (they announced the breakup in September 2000), “Bare†is an emotional ride to shake your nerves and rattle your brain, though not quite in the way Jerry Lee Lewis intended.
Take the demands and rewards of the final track, “Oh God (Prayer).†Concluding an album of moody highs and lows layered with tough rock, cool electronica and lush strings, this song suddenly drops back to voice and piano, conspicuously naked, alone and lost. Lennox is so far gone she asks, “Oh God, where are You now? ... I’m looking down at the abyss where You don’t exist.†It sounds as though she’s breaking while you listen.
The moment she recorded it, she knew she’d cut deep. “I sang it once only,†she says. “That’s what you get on the CD. When I came out of the studio, the producer [Steve Lipson] and the engineer [Heff Moraes] were white. They couldn’t talk.â€
Sitting on a sofa in a North London rehearsal studio, where she and her band were preparing for their world tour, Lennox recalls the performance with her usual intensity, frowning as she strives to be honest without surrendering a syllable of privacy.
“That voice you hear is me stripped bare,†she says. “It’s a tightrope place to be; there’s no safety whatsoever when you are in the shadow of fear, darkness, sadness, grief. Since I was 14, depressions have ridden roughshod through me. It’s obvious. My music is all about that, although I used to not talk about it because I felt it was somehow shameful. Well, ‘Oh God’ reflects a place where you’re in fetal position, and you’ve cried so much that tears are not going to help. It’s nothing to do with money, success or how sunny it is outside.
“I couldn’t end this album with a solution because I don’t have one. Instead, it’s a profound question mark.â€
Aware of her visual image -- from the “gender-bending†male suits of the ‘80s through the ornate feathered regalia of her 1992 solo debut, “Diva†-- Lennox off-duty cuts an engaging figure, her elegant pants and jacket offset by a baggy beanie tugged down over her left ear.
Her nature is evident in her bare face: frown lines between her eyebrows, smile lines around her mouth, small vertical grooves above her top lip declaring incipient middle age.
“I always believed that artists had to suffer,†she asserts, with a grim grin, her Scottish accent gently rolling those Rs. “I knew they had to carry some cross to gain the stamp of authenticity. And I tell you, I have it now. I’ve earned it.â€
Family travails
AltHOUGH she knows her troubles are of the kind that fall into most lives, she has worked her emotional passage through, for example, her volatile relationship with Eurythmics partner Dave Stewart (they were ex-lovers even before they made all those ‘80s albums), her shipyard-worker father’s death from cancer, a short-lived early marriage, the stillbirth of her first child. And now her second marriage is over, though Fruchtman lives near her London home to be near their two daughters, Lola and Tali.
Her sparse post-Eurythmics recording and touring schedule arose from immersion in family life. “I desperately wanted to be around my children, make everything cozy and sweet for them -- drive them to school,†she says.
But as they grew, the dormant creative impulse revived. In 1999, she began writing with Stewart for a one-off Eurythmics comeback, the “Peace†album and tour. Then she returned to the soundproofed sanctum in her basement to play her piano and write, “on a regular basis, like any craftsman.â€
Although she says it’s “too close to the bone†to discuss “Bare†as her “divorce album,†she admits some of the lyrics that poured out at first were too specific to go public. But as the songs developed, she concentrated on the universal, sharable emotions. “I just try to understand myself,†she says. “So I sing about my anger, the pain, the joy, the sublime exquisite sexuality and sensuality. Whatever I’m experiencing. I don’t want to censor myself -- that wouldn’t make any sense.â€
Then, feeling the intimacy of what she had done, she decided to shoot the CD booklet herself.
With a friend, she created stark black-and-white images to fit the title and suggest some kind of antidote to glamour worship: “It shows who I am and it’s dignified -- no, it’s more than dignified, it’s empowered! [Forget] that ‘dignified’! I’m more than dignified. A lot of brain cells up here. Why should I feel that I’ve been trashed because I’m 48?â€
She knows she shouldn’t, and she’s pretty sure she won’t. In fact, her confidence has rounded out now, ousting old doubts that she wasn’t entitled to the appreciation her audience gave her.
“I’m not saying I’ve made the quintessential record to address people’s difficulties or make them feel better, but I want it to be a work of significance,†she says. “What will thrill me is if the album has some kind of resonance, if it makes some significant impact on the lives of people who hear it. That’s the ambition.
“And I actually think the communication that occurs when we go out into the theaters will be somewhat of an event, that people will identify with what I’m singing about and remember it. I know it’s deeper than ‘entertainment.’ I know that for sure.â€
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