Customer Reviews

Annie Lennox - The Biography

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This latest biography of Annie Lennox seems to be a cut-and-paste effort of quotes from previous AL biographies and magazine articles. Many passages repeat these other sources virtually verbatim.

As a longtime Annie Lennox fan, I concede that I already knew most of what this book "reveals" about her. And I praise the co-authors for being thorough. To their credit, they did uncover evidence of early demos and unreleased songs that had been held back from fans in the past.

But because Annie herself declined to be interviewed for this book, the authors relied heavily on culling extended quotes from previously published material. When this task got too tedious, they resorted to paraphrasing previously published material. But they lost the plot a few times in this book, by pasting these quotes out of chronological order -- i.e., they quoted Annie saying she likes "the tackiness of" the drag queen look to explain her costume on 1992's Diva album cover, when that exact quote was something Annie said (and other journalists published) in the early 1980's. Also, some of the "facts" reported failed to be caught by the proofreader (i.e., saying that Eurythmics recorded "Winter Wonderland" for "A Very Special Christmas" in 1989, after the "We Too Are One" album -- when actually the Christmas record was realeased in 1987, concurrenly with the "Savage" album).

This book is at its best during its analysis of Annie's music, covering everything from Annie's very first record with The Catch in 1977, through each and every Tourists and Eurythmics album in the late 1970's and 1980's, and all of Annie's 1990's output (both as a solo artist and with the recently-reunited Eurythmics). The authors break down each album song by song, and devote at least a paragraph to an analysis of each song -- in the order in which the songs appear on the album -- in terms of its musicality and its emotional impact on the listener. This is where the authors really shine.

Another one of this book's strengths is that the authors give A.L. fair treatment. A.L.'s legendary diva tantrums have been tabloid fodder for her entire career, but the authors of this book take care not to present the artist out of context; instead, they rather sympathetically explain Annie's side of each story while also allowing rebuttals from those who were on the receiving end. The authors interviewed several people close to Lennox. In particular, their interviews with Annie's ex-boyfriend Peter Ashworth were enlightening. These interview quotes provide the most original material in this book, although the ever-present cutting & pasting gets mixed in with the original interview quotes.

Annie Lennox is just as famous for her visuals as for her music, and to this end, the book contains many pictures. But even the photographs seem to be a retread of familiar material harkening back to previously published biography books. The few new pictures include outtakes from previously published photo sessions, and two invasive pictures of Annie in private moments with her children that the singer would not want published. And even though the book's cover picture is from Annie's "Diva" era circa 1992, the book's photo inserts contain little of Annie's solo era. In fact, in the third photo insert -- which was meant to cover the 1990's portion of Annie's career -- the authors insert a picture of Annie posing with her father, who died in 1986. And if this picture looks familiar, it's because it was published in previous biographies in the 80's... but by now that should come as no surprise!

Non-fans (and possibly even lukewarm fans) will still find a lot to enjoy in the book, and might not find the errors and redundancies to be as glaring as the diehard fans (like myself) most likely will. To its credit, this book is the only one to cover the entire scope of Annie's life and career. While the flurry of mid-80's Eurythmics biographies provided much recyclable material throughout the early chapters of this book, the fact that few biographies appeared later means that the authors of this book had to forge ahead on their own to cover the more recent years of A.L.'s life and career. They write well... theirs is a light and breezy style occasionally dripping with dry British humor (read their description of the video for "Do You Want To Break Up?" in particular... they're not afraid to admit when the quality of Annie's work falls below her usual high standards). And despite their annoying tendency to rely on cutting & pasting quotes without maintaining chronological order, and their way of paraphrasing to the point that they border on plagarism more than once, they manage to maintain an overall tone in the book that treats Annie Lennox respectfully. Even when talking about delicately sensitive matters like the death of Annie's son, or potentially tabloid-rich tales about her divorces, they maintain a non-sensationalistic approach.

Bottom line: this book covers it all, from Annie's birth in 1954 to the concerts she and Dave Stewart performed in the year 2000. But if you're an ardent fan, don't expect to find much new material here; instead enjoy the very full account of Annie's life and career pieced together in an unchallenging, familiar, and easy-to-digest format.

This book is a MUST for anyone who has followed Annie Lennox throughout her entire career! With mind boggling research, some never before published photos and incredible insight, you find yourself unable to put it down. It leaves no question unanswered, and gives insight into this enigmatic woman, like no other biography has been able to. All holes in stories of the past are quickly filled in in this book. There are very intelligent commentaries on every song Annie has ever recorded, with and without Eurythmics. The authors talk to ex-lovers, friends and co-workers in Annie's life, and uncovers literally everything you could want to know. Highly recommended.

I found this book tedious, to say the least. I have followed Annie Lennox's career since the early eighties, and having read plenty of interviews all through these years, I expected to read a book that might shed new light on this wonderful performer. Instead I found a comprehensive body of work regarding the description of every single song and video performed by her. That is great for die-hard fans thirsty for details, but fails to grasp the reader's attention for long and should by no means be the final goal of any biography! Besides the authors failed to bear in mind that most A.L.'s fans are over their 30's and that the biography was Annie Lennox's and not Shakira's, for the use of storytelling-like idiomatic expressions (e.g. "...at the tender age of six...") and the lack of depth in the subject matter of the book is more suitable for a teenage pop idol biography! All in all, buy the book if you crave for the info, otherwise avoid it!

In my view, this bio will be best appreciated by very serious fans of Annie Lennox and Eurythmics. The authors are extremely thorough, describing at length practically every song ever sung, every video ever shot, every costume ever worn, every photo ever taken, etc. As someone who enjoyed Eurythmics and Lennox's music and thought a Lennox bio would be an interesting read, this level of detail quickly became tedious. The book also suffers from not having the direct cooperation of Ms. Lennox, lacking the life that comes from in depth interviews specifically for the purpose of a biography, as opposed to various previous interviews put in the context of a biography. Finally, at times the authors made sweeping and grand statements, which left me with the impression that perhaps they were too in awe of Ms. Lennox to write a truly objective biography. Still, for those who are serious fans, they will likely appreciate the level of research and detail that went into this comprehensive bio.

This interesting book incorporates re-treads of old newspaper and magazine articles and even actual biographies. Sometimes word-for-word plagiarism of fan websites is inserted. While the book does offer some new tidbits, one can only wonder as to the accuracy of the information after such blatant copying of pre-existing information. It is interesting to note that reviewers of the authors' past biographies have noticed similar behaviors. Having said that, it is an interesting read and hard to put down at times. Occasionally, the authors give us too much information (do we really need a name and description of every single instructor at every institute of learning that Annie attended?). In a nutshell, if you're a Eurythmics or Annie Lennox fan, you will have to have it. For everyone else, it serves as a good introduction to Annie's persona; however, take it with a grain of salt.

I'm a relatively new Annie Lennox fan and I really enjoyed this book. I disagree that this is just 'rehash' - as the authors couldn't speak to Annie (and let's face it, she's never going to write her own memoirs), they've put her quotes in context with the events and opinions and memories from other people who were there at the time. This is what most biographers do when the book isn't authorised. I think it's a really interesting read and certainly lets us get as close as we ever will. I also enjoyed the music and video breakdown - I never realised she wrote so much about her life in her songs.

I am very pleased with my book and it arrived in good time and is in great condition. Great service...thank you.

I loved this book as it really captured Annie Lennox for me. She's such an extraordinary woman who on one hand likes to keep herself to herself and on the other writes all her experiences down in her songs. It's amazing that she's managed to juggle family and a pop career and I hope she makes another comeback soon!