Dec. 25: Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics is 56 today.

 

Born on Christmas Day in 1954, in Torry, Aberdeen, Scotland, Annie Lennox is probably best known as a founding member of the Eurythmics duo, which she formed in 1980.

Lennox penned some of the band's best-known tracks, including "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),"  "Here Comes the Rain Again,"  "Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four), "There Must be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)" and "Love Is a Stranger."

In the 1990s, Lennox embarked on a solo career beginning with her debut album Diva, which produced several hit singles including "Why" and "Walking on Broken Glass."  She has released five solo studio albums and a compilation album, The Annie Lennox Collection, in 2009.

(Continued below video and Amazon portals ...)

HIGHLY Recommended (Press album covers for direct links to Amazon):

Annie took piano lessons at age 7, and won a place at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she studied the flute and classical music for three years.

Between 1977 and 1980, Lennox was the lead singer of The Tourists, a moderately successful British pop band and her first collaboration with Dave Stewart. During the time they were in The Tourists, Stewart and Lennox were involved in a relationship, though this had ended by the time they formed Eurythmics.

Lennox and Stewart's second collaboration, the 1980s synthpop duo Eurythmics. Early on, Lennox was known for her androgyny, wearing suits and once impersonating Elvis Presley. Eurythmics released a long line of successful singles in the 1980s.

Lennox and Stewart reconvened Eurythmics in the late 1990s with the album Peace, their first album of new material in ten years. A subsequent concert tour was completed, with profits going to Greenpeace and Amnesty International. The duo ultimately disbanded in 2005, having released a compilation album that year.

She is the recipient of eight BRIT Awards, more than any other female artist. In 2004, she won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Into the West,"  written for the soundtrack to the feature film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Lennox has been named "The Greatest White Soul Singer Alive" by VH1 and one of The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time by Rolling Stone. She has earned the distinction of "most successful female British artist in UK music history" because of her global commercial success since the early 1980s.

Including her work within Eurythmics, Lennox is one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 80 million records worldwide.

####