Album Reviews |

Annie Lennox



The Collection 7½ ( 2009 )
Little Bird / Walking on Broken Glass / Why / No More "I Love You's" / Precious / Love Song for a Vampire / A Thousand Beautiful Things / Sing / Pavement Cracks / A Whiter Shade of Pale / Cold / Dark Road / Pattern of My Life / Shining Light

Like or loath the Eurythmics in their day, there's no doubting what an icon Annie Lennox was and still is, and how loved she is within the UK and elsewhere in the world. This timely collection of her solo work will provide at least two tunes every music lover should in theory like, whether they subscribe to NME, Kerrang, Q or just read The Sun at the weekend for the football preview. I hardly even need to talk about these bunch of tunes, songs such as 'Walking On Broken Glass' or the teary 'Why' are now embedded within a nations conciousness. There are a couple of less familiar hits I would like to discuss though. Annie's cover of Procol Harum's classic 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale' can't possibly be as good as the original and indeed it isn't. Nothing at all wrong with her vocal performance here, which is superb, yet the synth led music backing simply doesn't do the song actual justice. Tagged onto the end of this set we also find Annie covering an Ash tune of all things. Ash might have been either too polite or money grabbing to say no, yet Annie covering a song as straightforward as 'Shining Light' is more the sort of thing i'd expect from that bird who used to be in M-People. Heather what's her name. Heather ANYBODY is always 'mills' now isn't it, so forgive me for forgetting. Ah, Smalls! Heather Smalls! Her with a Malteser in her mouth every time she sings? Yeah, her.

'No More I Love Yous' pops up, we all remember that. Fewer will remember 'Love Song For A Vampire' which may or not have been for a film, although it sounds like it was. A repeating dirge like synth riff pops up over which Annie sounds slightly processed by the mix in the studio, presumably for 'evocative' effect. You know, almost like an Enya track? Still, this weird production and her voice still win through in the end. Unimatinatively titled this set may be but i'm sure it'll be a steady seller for years to come, rather than months. What Annie does next is anybodies guess though. In my view, she really needs to surprise us a little next time she produces original material. Still, I did see her on 'The One Show' the other night and she seems a decent sort and I hope this review from hardly her number one fan is resonably fair.

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