The Eurythmics

Imagine my surprise and delight coming out from under my mother’s wings and landing in NYC in the summer of 1983 to discover a world tailor-made to fit me. After an uncertain beginning, I got a job working at a “graphics service center” with other artistic freaks. I’d play frisbee during the day, work in the evenings, and go out dancing and drugging on the weekends. I was young and dumb and full of…energy, and so, seemingly, was the entire city. My future bristled with promise and, when I turned on the radio, Eurythmics came out.

It was really quite mind-boggling. My introduction to radio and popular music had been less than impressive, with the airwaves clogged with tired rock clichés like the execrable REO Speedwagon or the unfathomably lame Styx (although I must admit that I thought (past tense) Pieces of Eight rocked). Suddenly, out of nowhere, there were signs of musical life in the vast wasteland. Blondie had certifiable hits. Gary Numan actually charted. By the time I hit NYC, new wave was in full flower, and everywhere I turned, there was some fascinating music being made, whether it was Talking Heads’ apocalyptic urban funk or Laurie Anderson’s cerebral performance shtick or David Van Teighem playing the entire city with his drumsticks or Yello filling the Roxy or whatever. Everywhere I listened, beautifully skewed music flowed. And it wasn’t just in NYC either. Some of these bands had international reach. Some of these alien songs were actually being embraced by that which I had learned to fear and hate, the squishy center of America. The Police were actual rock stars – not like the Clash or the Pretenders, who had (have) loyal, strong, but relatively modest fan bases – but actually stadium-filling, girls-screaming, Teen Beat rock stars. If anybody doubted the revolution was afoot, one needed look no further than the very top of the record charts where, in 1983, Eurythmics occupied the top spot with the title track from their second album, Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). The times, as somebody once said, they were a changin’.

Eurythmics (Webster defines eurythmic as “the art of harmonious bodily movement especially through expressive timed movements in response to improvised music,” in other words, dancing) grew out of The Tourists, a group formed by exceptional vocalist Annie Lennox and her lover, multi-instrumentalist Dave Stewart. The Tourists expired, begetting Catch, which, in turn, spawned Eurythmics (like fellow scenesters Talking Heads, Eurythmics eschew the “the” – which is not to say that they eschew The The, but just that they don’t like preceding their name with a definite article). A first album, Into the Garden, faired poorly and didn’t make it out of England. Stewart invested in a home studio and the two shut the door and almost single-handedly (well, double-handedly) wrote and recorded their follow-up, Sweet Dreams.

Although a bit trying at times, Sweet Dreams is an astonishing album, and, surprisingly, it took the pop world by storm. It is an album of contrasts and, for whatever reason, all those contradictory impulses don’t cancel each other out. The music is almost entirely synthetic, but it’s balanced by Lennox’s remarkably soulful singing. Although electronic, much of the music is deliberately thin and clunky, like Stewart was using technology that was already ten years outdated. The synth beds warble and wiggle, and many of the sounds ping and splat with a charming lack of sophistication. Odd little grunts counteract the precise coldness of the electronics. And then there was Annie Lennox herself. Pop culture was going through one of its periodic fascination with cross-dressing, although, as usual, it was mostly boys dressing up like girls (David Bowie, Boy George, the New York Dolls), but Annie Lennox (and, to some extent, Grace Jones), twisted that around and made androgynous swing both ways. She wore close-cropped orange hair and dressed in suits and smoked cigars and did whatever she could to distance herself from stereotypically “feminine” appearances. If you closed your eyes, you could get seduced by her warm, emotive vocals, but when you opened them again, there would be this thin man with shocking hair smoking a cigar. Even this song is full of complimentary contradictions. It is a love song – or at least a song about love – but never before has love sounded so unappealing.

And somehow, all these contradictions work.

Eurythmics followed with their strongest album, the wonderful Touch, which refines their cool/warm, male/female, sexy/cerebral mix to perfection. And then, not surprisingly, it all came crashing down.

Oh, not for Eurythmics, who continued to have hits throughout the decade, but for new wave. The wonderfully artificial textures and robotic rhythms failed to enchant the charts any more and new wave quickly became vilified and ridiculed as people wondered just what the hell they had been thinking. Not since disco had a popular musical form burned so bright and been extinguished so quickly. Most groups were swept out with the trash, but Eurythmics dramatically changed their sound (read: sold out) and managed to stay afloat for a few more years. Abandoning their quirky electronics, they put all their chips into the soul boat and their next album (ignoring the soundtrack for 1984 – which wasn’t used for the movie), Be Yourself Tonight, sounds like a tired Motown retread, including guest spots from both Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin. The songwriting is strong, the production is solid, and I could not be less interested. They milked the white soul angle for a couple of albums and Annie Lennox has since gone on to become a straight-up diva with none of her intriguing cross-signal sexuality intact. Polished. Refined. Sophisticated. Boring.

Ah, but for a moment there, through a crack in the culture, the beautifully damaged, intriguingly contradictory, breathtakingly original Eurythmics perfected the art of harmonious bodily movement especially through expressive timed movements in response to improvised music, and the world was a better place, full of mystery and promise.