Annie Lennox

The image was burned into the memory of a generation: 1983, a woman with short orange hair, in a well-cut man's suit, staring into the camera without blinking, with a voice that sounded like no one else's. It was the video for "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", and that woman was Annie Lennox. At a time when a pop singer was supposed to be pretty, flirtatious, desirable, she put on a man's suit. And what matters in this piece is not the suit. It is what she put it on for.

Lennox was born on Christmas Day 1954 in Aberdeen, a grey stone city in the north of Scotland, into a working-class family: her father a shipyard boilermaker, her mother a cook. She studied classical music as a child, piano and flute, and out of that came a contralto voice —low, deep, powerful— that would be her real instrument. After a first band, she formed the duo Eurythmics with Dave Stewart, and with "Sweet Dreams", in 1983, the whole world surrendered: a mixture of synth-pop and soul, cold and burning at once, that put her at the top. Over the years she would sell tens of millions of records.

The suit of 1983

But let's go back to the suit, because that's where the point is. In the eighties, a woman in pop music had a mould assigned to her: to be displayed, to be liked, to be looked at. Lennox did the opposite. She cut her hair, put on men's clothes, became androgynous at a time when that was not a fashion but a scandal —even if Bowie had opened that door a decade earlier. And the reading I would offer is this: she didn't do it to hide, she did it so she would really be seen. The suit was not a mask that covered; it was a way of clearing away everything that got in the way —the expectation of the "female singer", the gaze that reduces a body before it hears a voice— so that what was left, at the front, was the only thing that mattered to her: the artist. She made herself impossible to classify on purpose, because what cannot be classified cannot be reduced. The mask, in her case, did not hide. It cleared the path towards her.

And here is an edge that makes her more human, not less. That woman of overwhelming presence on stage, the one who commanded a stadium with a look, describes herself as shy, introverted, socially uncomfortable. The imposing character was, in part, a construction: the way a reserved person found of standing in front of thousands. It isn't a contradiction; it's the craft. The mask served for that too — lending the shy woman the body of the one who is afraid of nothing.

The voice behind it

None of this would have worked, of course, if the voice hadn't been there behind it, and it was. Lennox was not a lucky image; she was one of the great voices of her generation, able to hold a ballad like "Here Comes the Rain Again" or to soar in "There Must Be an Angel". When Eurythmics ended, her solo career confirmed it: albums of her own, reinventions, and even an Academy Award for "Into the West", the song that closes The Lord of the Rings. The image opened the door; the voice was what stood behind it.

Two songs from that period say it well. "Why", from 1992, was the first single from her first solo album, and it is almost a declaration of independence: the woman who had been one half of a duo finally stands with nobody beside her and asks "why", over and over, of someone who does not understand the harm they are doing. It is reproach and plea at once, and placed there, opening her solo life, it sounds like something bigger than a lovers' quarrel: it sounds like the voice speaking alone for the first time. The other, "No More 'I Love You's'", shows the other side of her talent. It isn't hers by origin —it is a version of somebody else's song, by the duo The Lover Speaks, which she rescued in 1995 on an album made entirely of covers— but she sang it in such a way, with that feverish, almost hallucinated edge with which she narrates the renunciation of love, that it ended up sounding more hers than the writer's, and won her a Grammy. That is a rare and high form of talent: taking what belongs to someone else and making it your own.

The second act: using the fame

And then came the second act, which is the part that interests me most. With the fame already won, Lennox did with it something few people do: she used it. She threw herself into HIV/AIDS activism —working closely with Nelson Mandela's cause, taking on the problem of mother-to-child transmission of the virus in Africa— and built a feminist organisation, The Circle, to support women all over the world. The platform she had built by singing stopped being a trophy and became a tool. She turned the spotlight that was on her and pointed it outwards, at things bigger than herself.

The same gesture, twice

And there the reading closes, because the two things —the suit of the eighties and the activism that came later— are, at bottom, the same gesture. Her whole career is the story of someone who refused to accept the frame she was handed. She was meant to be a "female singer" and she put on a man's suit. She was meant, later in life, to be a pop star in retreat, and she became an activist. She never let anyone else decide what her image was for. She decided, always: first so that they would listen to her, then so that they would listen, through her, to the people nobody heard. It is the same fight, seen from the other side of the mirror, as Michael Kiwanuka's with his surname: he was asked to take off what was his, and she to put on what was expected of a woman. They both gave the same answer, and the answer was no.

Go and watch her, that video from 1983, and look at it again with this in mind. The woman in the suit staring into the camera was not hiding behind a costume. She was clearing everything out of the way so that, for once, the first thing you saw of a singer was not her body but her face, her voice, her decision. And decades later she used that same attention, so hard to come by, to point at things that mattered to her more than she did. That is the memory worth rewinding: the artist who refused to be looked at the way they wanted to look at her, and in exchange forced you to listen.

Sources

Ann (Annie) Lennox was born on 25 December 1954 in Aberdeen, Scotland, into a working-class family (her father a shipyard boilermaker, her mother a cook); she had a classical musical training and has a contralto voice. She was a member of the band The Tourists and then, with Dave Stewart, of the duo Eurythmics (formed in 1980), whose worldwide success came with "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" (1983); her androgynous image —man's suit, short orange hair— became iconic and established her as an artist who transcended gender and style. Eurythmics sold tens of millions of records and count "Here Comes the Rain Again" and "There Must Be an Angel" among their hits. Lennox has described herself as introverted and shy despite her stage presence. In her solo career (from "Diva", 1992) she won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Into the West" (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2004). "Why" (1992) was the first single from "Diva"; "No More 'I Love You's'" (1995), included on her covers album "Medusa", is a cover of a song by the duo The Lover Speaks (1986) and won her a Grammy. Her activism includes her work against HIV/AIDS —associated with Nelson Mandela's 46664 campaign and with mother-to-child transmission of the virus— and the founding, in 2008, of the feminist NGO The Circle; she was appointed OBE in 2011 and a UN goodwill ambassador. Readings of the meaning of her image and her songs are offered as the author's interpretation. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Britannica, EBSCO, Wikipedia and press coverage.