Annie Lennox

I love when a music video is related to an album cover and that's the case with the video for "Why" from the Annie Lennox Diva LP. In the video, directed by Sophie Muller- who also directed for No Doubt's "Don't Speak" and "Simple Kind of Life" (which is very similar to the video for "Why")- she sits before a mirror and puts on makeup and by the end of the song she looks like she does on the Diva cover.

Also, "Why" is just a cool song, one of my favorites from the 90s.

The Diva album itself is good and bad. Too many songs sound cold and electronic- she'd have done better to have a full band. Some of the foregettable songs (I can't remember their names) sounded dated back in 1992 and haven't gotten any better.

Some music magazine reviewers complained that the material itself was uneven and Lennox might do better with songwriting help. Her next record, Medusa, was a collection of covers, still many of the songs were disappointing. The best were "A Whiter Shade of Pale", Paul Simon's "Something So Right", and "No More I Love You's"- a song I want to like, but I can't get past all the weird baby talk.

Anyway, back to Diva. I love "Why", "Walking on Broken Glass", and a ballad from Side Two, "Stay By Me", which is one of my favorite songs ever. Whenever I hear it, it reminds me of being in high school and listening to it by the pool on a perfect summer afternoon (I've always been a dork).

Note: a few of the songs from this record made it onto the soundtrack of that stupid Demi Moore movie Striptease.

Note Two: One of the B-sides, "Step by Step", became a big hit for Whitney Houston.