Categories
Music

They have given us a superb collection of songs!

Eurythmics reliving Sweet Dreams with hits set
LOS ANGELES (Billboard) – Twenty-five years after forming Eurythmics, Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox admit that how they write songs together remains a mystery.
“It takes a tremendous amount of faith every time I go into the studio,” Lennox says. “Music comes easy to me — melody, chord progression, no problem. That’s something very simple, and I like to sit down and do that. But to actually literally write something important …”
She trails off as she shakes her head.
“(If) someone starts up a conversation with me, I have a lot to say and it comes easily to speak, but to actually hone it down to the craft of song or whatever it might be, you know, it’s actually quite challenging to me. So I just kind of have to suspend disbelief. (Dave’s) just the opposite, so that never helps.”
Indeed, Stewart says the pair popped out with relative ease the two new songs that appear on “Eurythmics Ultimate Collection,” out November 8 on Arista Records.
“I’ve Got a Life,” the first single, is classic Eurythmics: an uplifting melody juxtaposed with sad lyrics. “That’s every Eurythmics song,” Stewart says with a laugh. “There’s a lot of optimism, there’s a lot of angst and melancholy in the same song, which is unusual.”
Lennox thinks their songs just reflect life’s contradictions. “Life is joyous and full of beauty and hope and optimism and at the same time, it’s tempered by potential catastrophe personally or nationally at any moment,” she says.
The “Ultimate Collection” contains 17 past U.K. and U.S. hits the duo culled from as far back as 1983’s “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” up to “17 Again,” from its last album, 1999’s “Peace.”
Even though the new collection, aside from the two new songs, is fairly similar to a greatest-hits set that came out in 1991, Stewart says, “There’s a whole generation of people who doesn’t even know about the Eurythmics.”
Separately, they’ve both been busy composing for films. Lennox won an Oscar last year for co-writing “Into the West” for “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” Stewart shared a 2005 Golden Globe with Mick Jagger for their song “Old Habits Die Hard,” which they wrote for the remake of “Alfie.”
HE SAID, SHE SAID
To sit with the pair, whose history actually goes back to pre-Eurythmics group the Tourists, is to witness two distinct personalities who display tremendous warmth and ease toward each other, complete with the freedom to genially bicker over the past.
When asked if they consider Eurythmics an ongoing concern, even though they may go years without recording, they do not answer, instead noting that they had to have some time apart after the first decade of incessant touring and recording.
“But we never fought,” Stewart says.
“We did too fight,” Lennox counters.
“Did we?” Stewart asks.
They agree that they had to get off the schedule they were on in order to “do regular things,” Stewart says. “I wanted a family,” Lennox adds, “and they don’t come off the shelf.” (Lennox had two daughters with Uri Fruchtmann, to whom she was married from 1988-2000.)
When asked if they plan to work on a new album, they just laugh. “I’m always amazed when people ask us,” Lennox says. “We don’t know.”
Although they have not ruled it out, it is also unlikely that they will tour behind the “Ultimate” set, in part because Lennox dislikes many aspects of being on the road. “I get all anxious and I can’t calm down. And to do the 54 dates I did with Sting (last year), it was mad. I don’t really know why I did it. I thought I misread the amount of dates.”