Our Annie Lennox Moment...
Was the synth pop star predicting our future with her 1992 album, Diva, and "Money Can't Buy It"
Lennox, Lennox? Anyone? Lennox? Everyone remembers the Eurthyumics “Sweet Dreams Are Made of These,” but does anyone know the brilliant lyrics and voice behind that song?
I am interrupting your regular version of Letter from a London pub for a brief interlude of Annie Lennox.
Scrolling through my Instagram this morning in London, I came across a totally surprising — and quite appealing — video of Rickey Gervais singing in his new-wave act Seona Dancing. The band, while virtually unknown (even in England) did have success in the Philippines with the song "More to Lose" — and actually, Ricky is quite good — New Wave lost out when Ricky went full-on comedy. See for yourself…
Annie, however… Annie went solo. And her 1993 album Diva hit the top of everyone’s chart. She was one of the first artists to lend her music to television, in her case, the groundbreaking HBO show, The Sopranos, credited with changing the trajectory of the medium. And Annie was a cause celebrity, before Bono made it trendy… and annoying.
After perusing through my old favs on Diva, I came across a song “Money Can’t Buy It,” which I think is way more an anthem for our times than it was during the Clinton era.
Now,
Hear this
Pay attention to me
'Cause I'm a rich white girl and it's plain to see
I got every kind of thing that the money can buy
Back in 1993, Annie was thinking more about becoming a mother and “Money Can't Buy It” was written in relation to her experience of childbirth, according to the BBC. Becoming a mother had “changed her life and of course its going to have some affect,” further adding it had brought many "qualities back into my life that I feel I had been missing for years, that's the beauty of children.”
Let me
Let me tell you all about it
Let me amplify
I got diamonds?
You heard about those.
She acknowledged "it is not like going to the supermarket and it being something you can buy, you never know how it will work out"
If you pay more attention to the lyrics, however, Annie seems to speak more to our generation of technocrats and autocrats who talk about buying Greenland, media owners accountable to shareholders who reap the benefits of the now disempowered working poor (the press), and CEOs who can’t get enough of anything material — another house sitting empty, another car in the garage, another collectible collecting dust in Switzerland — that their salaries are 32 times the average worker.
I got so many that I can't close my safe at night in the dark
Lying awake in a sick dream
So… I guess, Annie, where are you? As LA burns and Donald Trump prepares to upend civililised society in America, and NGOs become a “save the poor” industry for billionaires with tax-free foundations, Annie, I give you the podium. Come back. School us all, because after that brilliant spoken-word take down boasting your diamonds is a brilliant message of redemption.
Take the power to set you free
Kick down the door and throw away the key
Give up your needs
Your poisoned seeds
Find yourself elected to a different kind of creed.