Savage cover

Savage

Released

One shudders to think what was going through Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart’s heads as this record was made. With its immediate predecessors Be Yourself Tonight and Revenge, they had reached the platinum league of 1980s stardom alongside Sting, Dire Straits, Simple Minds, U2 and co — and musically they’d played the stadium game — but this album sounds like a crazed refutation of that. From the shattered pseudo-house of “Beethoven (I Love to Listen To)” on in, its sounds are shattered and broken, its lyrics nightmarish stream of consciousness with Lennox inhabiting multiple characters (including, gloriously, a Mick Jagger pastiche on “I Need a Man” and Bob Dylan on “I Need You”) cavorting through a deluxe dream-logic hall of mirrors. Their pop instinct is as perfect as it ever was — hence big hits “Shame” and “You Have Placed a Chill in my Heart” — but it’s all so utterly chilling and broken, returning to the weirdness of early electro pop era Eurythmics albums only more so. Still an eerily mind-warping listen to this day.

Joe Muggs

Suggestions
Echoes cover

Echoes

Wally Badarou
Closer Apart cover

Closer Apart

Okzharp, Manthe Ribane
Overgrown cover

Overgrown

James Blake
In Amber cover

In Amber

Hercules & Love Affair
Let’s Turn It Into Sound cover

Let’s Turn It Into Sound

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith
Blind on a Galloping Horse cover

Blind on a Galloping Horse

David Holmes, Raven Violet
Sugarland cover

Sugarland

Kissing The Pink
Touch cover

Touch

Eurythmics