Eurythmics

Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart were no longer a couple when they founded Eurythmics. It is worth starting there, because the story is almost always told the other way round: the romance did not break up inside the duo, it had broken up before, while they were still playing together in another band. Eurythmics was born in 1980 out of two people who had already done that mourning and who decided that what they had working together was worth more than what they had lost. Out of that came a sound that seems contradictory and isn't: cold machines and a contralto voice that is nothing like cold.

Two bands before the one that worked

They met in London in the mid-seventies and played together for the first time in The Catch, a short-lived group from 1976 and 1977 that left little trace. Out of that came The Tourists, and about The Tourists there is also a crooked version worth straightening out.

It was not a band that failed to take off. "I Only Want to Be with You" reached number four in Britain in 1979 and went gold; "So Good to Be Back Home Again" reached number eight. They had hits, a label and a tour. What happened was not that they didn't work: it was that they broke. The group dissolved in 1980, and by then Lennox and Stewart had already ended as a couple. The duo was what they decided to do after both of those things, not in the middle of either.

Five thousand pounds in an attic

The attic of the legend exists and has an address. It was the loft of an old warehouse in Chalk Farm, in north London, where the two of them lived and worked, and the central piece of equipment was an eight-track Tascam 80-8 recorder bought with a bank loan. There, in 1982, they recorded almost all of Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This); the finishing was done in a small room at The Church Studios. The whole album cost around five thousand pounds. It came out on 4 January 1983 and the single on the 21st of the same month.

The song is a strange mechanism: a synthesiser that goes round and round on itself and never resolves, a dry drum machine and, on top of it, a deep voice singing with the solemnity of someone bringing bad news. The video supplied what was missing. Cropped orange hair, a man's suit, a deliberately strange staging. On television in 1983 that was not a style: it was a question asked out loud about what a woman on a stage was supposed to look like.

And now the figures, which are also told wrong. "Sweet Dreams" was not number one in the United Kingdom: it reached number two. In the United States it did top the Hot 100, but for a single week, that of 3 September 1983. The duo's only British number one came two years later and is another song: "There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)", with Stevie Wonder on harmonica. The song everyone identifies them with is not, on the charts, the most successful one they made.

What they did with the rest of the decade

None of this was a stroke of luck, and the catalogue proves it. "Here Comes the Rain Again" and its strings, "Would I Lie to You?" with a whole rock band behind it, "Who's That Girl?", "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves". They moved from synth-pop to soul and from soul to rock without the effort showing, which is the hard part.

That last one has a story worth telling as it happened. They had thought of it for Tina Turner, who was not available. So they flew to Detroit and recorded it with Aretha Franklin. It was not a planned tribute or a generous handover: it was plan B, and plan B turned out better than the original.

The duo split up in 1990 and came back once, with Peace, in 1999. Annie Lennox meanwhile built a career of her own that has its own article on Rebobinados, and Dave Stewart went on producing for half the world. In 2022 they were back in the same room for another reason: on 5 November they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, introduced by The Edge, and that same year they also entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

What to remember

Eurythmics is not the story of a break-up turned into a record. It is the story of two partners who arrived at the duo with the mourning already done, with a bank loan, an eight-track recorder and an attic in Chalk Farm. Five thousand pounds and a year later they had a song that sounded like the following decade. That is the least romantic and most useful lesson: what they did was not sentimental alchemy, it was craft with the equipment they could afford.

And one clarification that does not diminish them. "Sweet Dreams" was number two in their own country and one week at number one in the United States; the charts say considerably less than the song does. Forty years on it still sounds just as strange and as exact, and it still lives alongside the image of a woman with orange hair and a man's suit who decided, in 1983, that she was not going to look like anything that was expected.

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Sources

Eurythmics was a British duo formed in 1980 by Annie Lennox (vocals) and Dave Stewart (instruments and production). The two had been romantic partners and played together first in The Catch (1976-1977) and then in The Tourists, a band that reached number four in Britain with "I Only Want to Be with You" (1979, gold record) and number eight with "So Good to Be Back Home Again", and that dissolved in 1980; the romantic relationship had ended before the duo was formed. The album "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" was recorded in 1982 in the loft of a former warehouse in Chalk Farm, north London, where the duo lived and worked, with an eight-track Tascam 80-8 recorder acquired through a bank loan, and was completed in a room at The Church Studios; its cost has been estimated at around 5,000 pounds. The album was released on 4 January 1983 and the single of the same name on 21 January. "Sweet Dreams" reached number two in the United Kingdom and number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for one week, that of 3 September 1983. The duo's only British number one was "There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)" (1985), with Stevie Wonder on harmonica. Other hits by the group are "Here Comes the Rain Again", "Would I Lie to You?", "Who's That Girl?" and "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves", the last of these originally conceived for Tina Turner and finally recorded in Detroit with Aretha Franklin. Lennox's androgynous image, with short orange-dyed hair and a man's suit, corresponds to the video for "Sweet Dreams". The duo separated in 1990 and reunited for the album "Peace" (1999). Eurythmics was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 5 November 2022, in a ceremony at which they were introduced by The Edge, and that same year entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Billboard, Sound on Sound, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Wikipedia and other coverage.