eBay

Annie Lennox's Album "Diva" aus dem Jahr 1992 bietet Hits wie "Walking on Broken Glass" und "Young and Beautiful". Die CD befindet sich in einem Jewelcase mit Original-Innenhülle und -Cover. Mit 11 Titeln in englischer Sprache vereint das Pop- und Rock-Genre die kraftvolle Stimme der Interpretin in einem zeitlosen Stil der 1990er Jahre. Die Erstausgabe auf BMG präsentiert sich in einem neuwertigen Zustand, sowohl die CD als auch das Inlay sind in Top-Qualität. Ideal für Fans von Annie Lennox und Liebhaber der Musik dieser Ära.

Die CD und der Einleger sind sehr gut erhalten. Siehe Fotos. Die Außenhülle hat leichte erkennbare Gebrauchsspuren.

“Diva” ist das Debüt-Soloalbum von Annie Lennox, das am 28. April 1992 veröffentlicht wurde. Hier ist die Titelliste des Albums:

Why

Walking on Broken Glass

Precious

Legend in My Living Room

Cold

Money Can’t Buy It

Little Bird

Primitive

Stay by Me

The Gift

Keep Young and Beautiful (Bonus Track)

Rezensionen:

Album of the Year lobt das Album für seine nostalgische Produktion und die beeindruckende Stimme von Annie Lennox. Besonders hervorgehoben werden die Melodien und die Instrumentierung1.

Rate Your Music beschreibt das Album als eine Mischung aus Sophisti-Pop und Pop Soul. Es wird als zeitlos und makellos bezeichnet, mit besonderen Erwähnungen für Songs wie “Why” und "Walking on Broken Glass"2.

Slant Magazine hebt die feminine Würde und die musikalische Struktur des Albums hervor, die es zu einem bedeutenden Werk in der Popgeschichte machen

To pick apart a deceptively simple album by its musical structure, Annie Lennox’s Diva opens with the simplest of chord progressions. A major fifth is sustained throughout the riff and only the descending bassline provides the tension (turning the fifth into an aroused and introspective sixth, and then resolving with a resigned seventh). That’s it. Nothing more complicated than that until the bathetically optimistic bridge. Stephen Lipson’s icy, new wave use of synthesizers—unfettered, tubular artificiality that’s poised directly between crystalline austerity and late-night Cinemax sleaziness—does very little to murk up the composition.

Frédéric Chopin's last piano and manuscripts take centre stage at renovated Warsaw museum

The song, “Why,” is hardly the sort of melodramatic setting we’d imagine from an album whose very name evokes histrionic pretense. But Lennox isn’t and has never been a representative pop diva. Her body is lanky and angular instead of curvaceously plush. Her exaggerated facial features (capped off with a most spectacular set of cheekbones that she wisely never allowed her hair to grow long enough to cover) are matched in androgen-fabulousness only by her tremulously guttural alto.

ADVERTISEMENT

Diva’s relative quietude is reflective of a woman in full awareness, if not complete control, of the occasional ostentation of her emotional whims. It’s musically analogous to All About Eve’s ferocious Margo Channing during those rare moments when she’s alone and contemplating the social consequences of her violent temper. It speaks exactly what she (Margo, Annie, every woman) wished she could convey, but the music underneath most of the album’s tracks is filled with the rumbling turbulence that betrays her best intentions.

Practically speaking, the music video for Diva‘s baroque dance hit “Walking on Broken Glass” harnesses this stress to a T. Dressed in Amadeus boudoir finery (not to be confused with the Vegas headdress crowning Lennox on the album’s disingenuously gaudy cover), the clip’s heroine finds her flirtations ignored until she gets her paramour alone in her chambers. He mistakenly reads her interest as sexual heat and, outraged, she casts him away, banging her fist against the wall in synchronization to the song’s rimshots. “Every one of us was made to suffer,” she reasons. “Every one of us was made to weep.” One of the most brilliant singles of the era, “Walking on Broken Glass” and its video cast a suspicious eye on the deliberate façade-maintenance of modern pop by playing up the same mixed signals that equips Diva with its power.

ADVERTISEMENT

Elsewhere on the album, the brooding “Legend in My Living Room” seems to address the false hopes the Eurythmics singer experienced early in her career from the promises of fame, fortune, and ultimately self-definition (i.e. the notion that she would find her soul in her image). And the lyrics to “Primitive”—“Wipe your tears and let the salt stains dry”—almost seem to address Lennox’s performance in Amos Gitai’s Birth of the Golem, in which she personified the creature born of clay (another role played, another legend in her screening room).

Ultimately, the album (well, the CD version of it, anyway) lands on its soft shoes with an incongruous cover of the 1930s MGM showtune “Keep Young and Beautiful,” which ends the introspection on a note of carefree self-parody. As befitting any diva, Lennox isn’t above a little bit of self-deprecation, but Diva glides with a rich, feminine dignity that stands tall in pop history.

Diva (Annie Lennox album)

Add article description

Diva is the debut solo studio album by Scottish singer Annie Lennox, released on 6 April 1992 by RCA Records. The album entered the UK Albums Chart at number one and has since sold over 1.2 million copies in the UK alone, being certified quadruple platinum. In the United States, it reached number 23 on the Billboard 200 and has been certified double platinum. Diva won the Brit Award for British Album of the Year at the 1993 Brit Awards. The album received nominations for Album of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Long Form Music Video, winning the latter award at the Grammy Awards the same year.

Quick Facts Diva, Studio album by Annie Lennox ...

Background and reception

Following the informal dissolution of Eurythmics in 1990, Lennox took some time away from the music industry, during which she gave birth to her eldest daughter. She commenced working on her first solo album in 1991 with producer Stephen Lipson. Though she had been accustomed to co-writing material with Dave Stewart during her years with Eurythmics, eight of the ten tracks on Diva were written solely by Lennox herself, with two tracks being co-written by her. Upon its release, the album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and would eventually yield five hit singles, three of which reached the Top 10 (although they had continued to achieve number one albums, Eurythmics had not scored a UK Top 10 single since 1986). Diva was ultimately certified quadruple platinum in the UK, more than any of Eurythmics' studio albums.

The song "Keep Young and Beautiful" was included on the CD release as a bonus track (the original vinyl album had only ten tracks). Another bonus track, "Step by Step", appeared on the Mexican and Japanese editions of the album and was also included as the B-side on the single "Precious". The song was later recorded by Whitney Houston for the 1996 film soundtrack The Preacher's Wife and subsequently became a hit single.

The headdress worn by Lennox on the album's cover (and seen in several of the album's videos) was obtained from the London-based costume company Angels. It had been used previously in the James Bond film Octopussy.

Critical reception

More information Review scores, Source ...

In 1993 the album was included in Q magazine's list of the "50 Best Albums of 1992". Rolling Stone described the album as "...state-of-the-art soul pop..." and it is included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's" list.

In their review, Rolling Stone commented:

State-of-the-art soul pop, Annie Lennox's solo debut is sonically gorgeous; it also declares her aesthetic independence. Ace sessionmen polish Diva's gloss, and producer Stephen Lipson (Pet Shop Boys, Propaganda) operates in hyperdrive, but these eleven songs are fiercely those of a sister doing things for herself. Three years after her last outing with Dave Stewart, her cohort in Eurythmics, Lennox voids any notion that he was her Svengali and she merely the MTV beauty with stunning pipes. Writing nearly all of Diva, she manages a whirlwind tour of mainstream R&B and retains her singular persona – an ice queen thirsting to be melted by love.

Track listing

More information No., Title ...

All tracks are written by Annie Lennox, except where noted.

More information No., Title ...

Video album

Quick Facts Diva, Video by Annie Lennox ...

Lennox simultaneously released a video album for Diva, featuring promotional videos for seven of the album's tracks along with an excerpt of a track entitled "Remember", which has never been released elsewhere. The video album was directed by Sophie Muller, who had worked with Lennox during her later years with Eurythmics.

Later in 1992, the video album was reissued as Totally Diva, featuring two additional videos that had been made since the original release in April: "Precious" and "Walking on Broken Glass". Totally Diva was subsequently released on DVD in 2000.

The only omissions from the video album were "Little Bird" (the video for which had not yet been made at that time), and the album track "Stay by Me", for which no video was made.

Track listing

More information No., Title ...

Personnel

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Diva.

Musicians

Annie Lennox – all vocals, keyboards

Stephen Lipson – guitars, programming, keyboards

Peter-John Vettese – keyboards, programming, recorder

Marius de Vries – programming, keyboards

Luís Jardim – percussion

Ed Shearmur – piano

Keith LeBlanc – drums

Doug Wimbish – bass

Kenji Suzuki [ja] – guitar

Steve Jansen – drum programming

Paul Moore – keyboards

Dave DeFries – trumpet

Gavyn Wright – violin

Technical

Stephen Lipson – production

Heff Moraes – engineering, MIDI management

William O'Donovan – mixing assistance

Ian Silvester – digital technician

Ian Cooper – mastering

Artwork

Laurence Stevens – sleeve designs

Satoshi – photography (front cover)

Anton Corbijn – photography

Charts