Savage – Eurythmics

The first time I spied Annie Lennox she looked a little… well, intimidating. Short-cropped shock of burnt orange hair, dressed like a man with a voice so deep and rich that many men would secretly envy. And those eyes – they looked like they could stare you down and kill you with a thought! The song, or should I say the video, was Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This). The year was 1983 and the track, despite sounding menacingly dark and gothic became the breakthrough hit for Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart. There’s no doubt MTV (which had launched little more than a year earlier) had a lot to do with it – how could anyone ignore an androgynous she-male with hair aflame, power dressed in a business suit pounding her fist on a boardroom table amongst a field of Jersey cows? Not me!

That video now has phenomenally clocked up almost 100 million You Tube views, so obviously it still resonates. Visually and musically Sweet Dreams was underpinned by Teutonic influences that continued with the follow up Love Is A Stranger. The Eurythmics were strange, mysterious, removed and alluring. They were now also successful with a rapid rise in popularity that would see them release an overly productive 6 albums in less than 5 years.

The icy, detached persona of la Lennox soon began to thaw on the follow up album Touch, released later that same year with Dave Stewart now solely handling the production. While Annie maintained her image with that fiery orange hair on the cover, musically singles like Here Comes The Rain Again and Who’s That Girl? with their accompanying videos portrayed a softer and more feminine side – even if Annie was channelling Marlene Dietrich cabaret style in the latter. The synthesisers and Germanic influences were still present enough to ensure a certain coolness of style, but the androgynous persona of Annie and the remote and voyeuristic presence of Dave from the previous album’s videos were now becoming more accessible. There were enough dark tones there to satisfy the fashionistas of hipness, but mainstream pop elements (and a sense of fun) were now creeping in too with songs like Right By Your Side.

The successor to Touch was 1984 (For The Love Of Big Brother), a controversial project where the Eurythmics were commissioned by Virgin Records to compose a soundtrack for the Michael Radford film starring John Hurt and Richard Burton (in his last film). The director later said that Virgin as financers of the film had forced him to replace the original score with a soundtrack composed by the Eurythmics that he didn’t want. Regardless the Eurhythmics’ scored a major hit with the clinically cool and irresistibly danceable Sex Crime.

By the time they released Be Yourself Tonight the band had hit top gear. The Eurythmics now had a big, brassy and ballsy R & B sound with Annie in sassy rock chick mode strutting out on tracks like Would I Lie To You? and Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves – the latter as a duet with Aretha Franklin. The Eurythmics had hired some of America’s top players to ramp up their new sound with Stevie Wonder, Nathan East (Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson) on bass, plus Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench from Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers among them. In all the album chalked up 4 hit singles and won them an even larger fan base globally.

Within a year the Eurythmics hit factory had kicked into gear again. The album’s title Revenge was supposedly a shot at the band’s critics and was also the name of the closing song on their long forgotten debut album In The Garden, but this record was so far removed from where the Eurythmics began only a few years earlier it was hard to believe this was the same band. Songs like Missionary Man, Thorn In My Side and When Tomorrow Comes were straight off the 80’s big hair production line with booming hollow drum beats, honking sax and synthesised bass lines. Yet, even in this company Annie Lennox still had the power to seduce with a stunning song like The Miracle Of Love.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4ZYp9HZe2o

Just when it seemed the Eurythmics had become an all too predictable MOR rock band they did a complete U turn and came up with Savage. This album was so darkly disconnected from the mainstream that it must have bewildered fans that had climbed on board over the course of their previous two albums. It wasn’t just the newer fair weather fans that were feeling left out in the cold, many critics didn’t warm to Savage either, but I love it.

Lyrically the theme of the album followed a bent and distorted ride into the twisted mind of the modern day housewife – or something like that. To me this album sounded like the one they should have made after Sweet Dreams. Musically it was a return to the innovative electronic/synth minimalism of that album, only bleaker and weirder. It was a concept album both lyrically and visually with videos made for every song on the record.

The first single Beethoven (I Love To Listen To) was so out there I think most people just didn’t get it. Lyrically it’s a bored suburban housewife fantasising over a random boy meets girl scenario, then turning her attention to her own situation and frustrations as “a girl who thinks she should have something extreme”. Apparently while listening to Beethoven (yeah, I know, it’s that German thing again).

I’ve Got A Lover (Back In Japan) has Annie characterising a woman who has men scattered in various locations (imagined or otherwise). It’s the final verse that’s the kicker with Lennox saving some of her best lines for last:

“I was bitter when I met you, I was eloquent with rage, like honey from a poison cup I flowed from stage to stage”.

By the time they slide into Do You Want To Break Up? this femme fatale is bemoaning her heart filled with lead with a car crash in her head while breaking out into the cheery chorus of the song’s title. This is a person breaking down as they’re trying to break up – not only the cold and distant character of old portrayed by Annie Lennox, but an increasingly disturbed one to the point where you feel weirdly guilty of wanting to sing along to the song.

Despite the icy title of You Have Placed A Chill In My Heart it’s the first song on the album to have a melodic chorus and subsequently became a regular inclusion in Eurythmics’ concerts afterwards, but this wounded woman is still the figure of your disgrace who’s too tired to think about the dirty old dishes in the kitchen sink. The song was barely a hit anywhere and must surely be one of the band’s most underrated songs.

Shame, the second single from the album, has a shimmering pop song feel a bit like The Dream Academy’s Life In A Northern Town, but the darkness still bubbles beneath the surface as the song deals with our preoccupations in the hyper desirable lifestyle images portrayed in the media and our unrealistic aspirations to attain them.

Side 1 closes out with the sobering Savage, where all mockery is laughing and all violence is cheap. And as this woman starts to wind her way out of the mire a little world weary wisdom emerges: “I have this unhappiness to wear around my neck. It’s a pretty piece of jewellery to show what I protect”. Reassurance in the symbolism and possibly some hope of redemption.

The second side of the album opens with a revitalised caterwauling Lennox as this woman who is now gathering strength from the madness and reasserting herself on I Need A Man:

“I don’t care about the way you look, you should know that I’m not impressed, ‘cause there’s just one thing that I’m looking for and he don’t wear a dress”.

Put The Blame On Me doesn’t give a damn about the consequences – her man can think whatever he wants as long as he wants her. The one thing we don’t know is if this is an attempt to repair her destructive relationship or has she found a new man?

The journey of this revitalised woman continues as she contemplates Heaven and then her own vulnerability in new found love as a Wide Eyed Girl. When you look at the video for the former you see this vamped up woman staggering around a hotel corridor visualised in a seedy LA retro glam. As they cruise the streets in a convertible (what else?) with Annie heavily made up in starlet blonde wig and Dave glimpsing her in the rear view mirror as the voyeur they find themselves reprising their roles from Love Is A Stranger. Looking back at this clip now you realise how Annie had easily predated the vamped up femme fatales that followed from Madonna’s Justify My Love three years later (which also opens identically with a blonde woman emotionally or chemically shattered staggering down a hotel corridor) right up to Lana Del Rey with her faded Hollywood glam and every wannabe in between.

The second last song on the album is the standout. With a simple acoustic guitar accompaniment combined with some slide work I Need You is a Dylan-esque proclamation that is worth it for the price of admission alone. Lennox’s twisted character is now asserting herself in a bizarre masochistic torment and once again she cannot be ignored:

I need you to pin me down just for one frozen moment.

I need someone to pin me down so I can live in torment.

I need you to really feel the twist of my back breaking

I need someone to listen to the ecstasy I’m faking.

Brand New Day opens with a gospel feel and while it appears there may be at long last salvation this emotionally scarred woman still has a long way to go:

You have taken my existence, you have filled it full of stones

You have turned into a stranger, now I need to walk alone

But I won’t be sad, I won’t be destroyed… it’s a brand new day.

On the surface it might seem like the lyrical content of Savage is too bleak or too ugly and confronting a subject to contend with. But lyrically it’s Annie Lennox at her most potent and musically it’s the Eurythmics at their creatively compelling. For mine that makes it their best album by far.