Today's YouTubery: Annie Lennox is beside herself...several times over

[thatcrazycajun]

For those who also have seen me link to this on Facebook, please accept my apologies for the repetition; but I know some of my friends here don't use FB and I want them to see this if they haven't already.

This is a music video starring Annie Lennox, the voice of Eurythmics and one of my favorite UK singing babes since the 1980s, when she first burst onto the scene rocking the riding-crop-wielding androgyne-psychiatrist look for the now-iconic video of "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This." In 1993, she hired actual doubles—real people, not herself replicated via camera trickery—to bring back that persona and a few others from MTV countdowns past for a new video of the third single from her debut solo album, Diva. (She was seven months pregnant with her second child when she filmed it; they put her in a dark costume on a dark stage to hide it, but look close in a couple shots and you can see her baby bump.)

It's not just that the song itself is a great, gay-dance-bar-ready rave-up, or that the video is so well choreographed and edited, or even the obvious homage to Cabaret. It's that this woman, with a history of changing her look more often than Madonna (and if you know anything at all about Madge, you know that's really saying something), has enough of a becoming sense of humor about it—not to mention a mischievous streak a mile wide—to have a little onscreen fun with it for our benefit. (And here's a diabolical thought: she could have swapped costumes with one or two of her doubles every so often, just to mess with our minds even more...and we'd never be sure which one was really Annie. She may well have done; that blowsy Monroe-style blonde from "I Need A Man" looks an awful lot like the real deal in one or two shots.) You have to wonder if this is what it looks like inside Annie's head.

And it doesn't hurt that she's founded a charity for a cause close to my Songbird's heart, and thus mine: helping HIV/AIDS-positive women in Africa. It's called The SING Campaign, and you should check it out. But first...
Annie Lennox Sings "Little Bird"...with a LOT of help

Comments

[anaisdjuna.livejournal.com]

"riding-crop-wielding androgyne-psychiatrist look"

Love this phrase! This was nicely written & I enjoyed knowing the background. Thanks for posting. The vid is great. Annie is a sublime freak. I think one of the Alter-Annies in the vid is a guy. The one with the bar of black across zir face.

When I worked at ColoNN Annie came in from an interview. When I heard this I promptly abandoned my post and went to stand and watch and flutter. I was too chicken to speak to her, but I smiled widely and she smiled back. She's an amazingly cool and beautiful woman who is also pretty down to earth in person. Viva Annie!

[anaisdjuna.livejournal.com]

PS. Cute icon :-)

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Thanks; I wish I could take credit for the icon, but the truth is I swiped it from someone else on LJ. And I think two or three of Annie's doubles were guys; it would also be entirely like her. (She's kinda like Stevie Nicks in that regard; both have huge gay-male followings, and Stevie has jokingly threatened to show up some year at the "Night of 1,000 Stevies" in NYC wearing full regalia to see whether anyone can spot her as the real thing.)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Didn't matter that she was pregnant. She's one of the sexiest woman on the planet. What a voice, what eyes, what songs, what a frickin' voice.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

The pregnancy didn't matter to me one way or t'other, except as an interesting bit of trivia and being impressed that she was willing to take on the work of filming in her condition. And I give you no argument on the eyes, the sexiness or the voice; I'd gladly listen to La Lennox sing the Aberdeen phone book any day.

[mrpsyklops.livejournal.com]

Great video! Thank you for posting and for the background.