“Insane”: the tangled relationship of Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart
How in God’s name Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart ever made a successful band out of Eurythmics defies the laws of convention.
That’s not because anything they made was ever remotely sub-par, but because who in their right mind would want to be in such an intimate dynamic with their ex-lover? There was some Fleetwood Mac levels of twisted shit going on with that one, without a doubt. In fact, they were almost giving Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham a run for their money.
The whole point in this is that it was obviously highly unusual for a musical duo to come together after they’d decided they were no longer compatible as romantic partners, as normally it’s the other way around. But in many ways, it was this precise relationship that kept the Eurythmics fire ablaze for so long, even though it was a warts-and-all approach.
It was something that they both naturally considered at length, but Stewart in particular waxed lyrical about in his 2016 autobiography, inventively titled Sweet Dreams Are Made of This. “I know just about every tiny molecule of Annie,” he candidly admitted, but even still, there was a line to be towed. “I don’t think that should be shared with the world. If I wrote about me and Annie, it would be a completely different book.”
That probably makes it sound a lot more sinister than it actually was, because there is no denying that the highs of the band soared to some fairly astronomical heights. Yet it was in the quieter moments, when the glare of the spotlight was elsewhere, and Lennox and Stewart were left staring each other in the whites of the eyes, that they really had to face up to the consequences of what they had done.
Truthfully, they had to confess that they were a pair of total anomalies. “I can’t think of any other couple that did what we did – to break up and then start a band,” Stewart said.
“Sonny and Cher did it the other way around: They were famous, then they broke up. What we went through was insane.”
Dave Stewart
Yet perhaps the most intriguing thing of all was what happened afterwards, and the things unsaid that the reverberations of their break-up left behind. Stewart knew without hesitation that Lennox’s first solo single, ‘Why?’, was about him – but they never discussed it. “We’ve met hundreds of times since then, and we never discuss our songs about each other,” he explained. “It’s opening up a can of worms. Who knows what will come out?”
It was a surprising thing to admit, especially given his assertion about knowing “every tiny molecule” of his former partner. There is still clearly an element of fear that operates as a barrier between them both, firstly in terms of the past, and also about what the truth really is. To say they are a knotted and tangled pair is only actually scratching the surface.
Eurythmics becoming one of the main faces of the new wave, defining synth pop, and selling more than 75million records around the world, acted almost as a ruse to the reality that hid underneath – Lennox and Stewart were two people who really needed each other, and could never quite figure out what capacity that should be in. Sure, they made the sound of the ‘80s, but at what cost?
