Annie Lennox has sung onstage with greats like Aretha Franklin and David Bowie. She has recorded alongside Al Green and Paul Simon. She has won four Grammies, seven Brit Awards, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar. She has sold some 80 million records with her former band the Eurythmics and beyond. But even if she hadn't done all of those things, she would still have a tribe of devotees following her every move.
Why? That voice, of course, which seems to encompass the whole of the hurt and the hope and the love of humanity. It's a pathos very much in evidence on her hits, both major and minor, from "Here Comes the Rain Again," "Angel" and, especially, "Why." The compassion comes through, too, when she interprets the words of another. Check her version of Cole Porter's "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" (1990's Red, Hot and Blue) and Neil Young's "Don't Let It Bring You Down" (1995's Medusa). They are perhaps two of the most personal reveals in coverdom.
Lennox's latest, Songs of Mass Destruction, finds the grand dame as compassionate as ever. And she is thrice as feisty, fighting disease ("Sing," with help from Madonna, Dido, Fergie, Pink, et al.), her heart ("Smithereens"), and, rousingly, the whole of stupidity ("Love Is Blind"). As Lennox sings in her single "Dark Road," the titular byway didn't get there by itself, but she as sure as hell is determined that it gets lit.
On All Hallow's Eve, exactly two years since the release of the Eurythmics' I've Got a Life (Ultimate Collection), the ever-divine diva will prove to Miami she not only still has quite some life to live, but she's also got life to give. Lots.
