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reviewed July 22 2003
It's come to this: most pop divas make it big as porn stars or not at all. This album too features a "bare" womyn on the cover and in the art work inside. The lyrics are also the same old love songs and songs of betrayal and pain. However, the lyrics are not classically pornographic a la Britney Spears or Mariah Carey and that is what seems so different about this album featuring a womyn singer in a culture that still greatly restricts the possibilities for hugely successful womyn artists. Love songs without the trash is what is supposed to sell this album. Here is someone who does not attempt to sell the album as what appeals to young heterosexuals. Though "bare," Annie Lennox is not due for the cover of "Maxim." Unlike Mick Jagger who has been known to wear make-up to look more like a womyn, Michael Jackson who also plays on the line between male and female and countless others, who have figured out what to do to broaden their audience the most, Annie Lennox and BMG have to know that they are reducing the possible breadth of their target audience with the picture of Annie Lennox on the cover. To be sure, there are lyrics that sound male in their expression of desire which again play on the line and since the lyrics of the whole album are still romance culture, the whole album can seem to be trying to sit on a fence. Nonetheless, that is not what is going to make it for this album. Annie Lennox carries some fame as a former "Eurythmics" singer. She does not come at this from no where. Hence, her greatest selling point or broadening of audience will be what she calls her "mature" outlook--meaning with appeal to the older crowd, much of which already knows her. The question is whether the people in their 40s and 50s will be tired of porno-pop and look to Annie Lennox as refreshment. This reviewer finds this album boring, but with sales at #3 according to Amazon as we go to press, obviously there is something to learn here about sales. By way of theoretical explanation, MIM would say that Annie Lennox is what keeps the porno-pop fresh for the romance culture. Without "variety," the romance culture would quickly collapse and patriarchy would have some serious trouble. It is only the music that goes around romance culture, attacks it directly or attacks the class and national oppression related to it that threatens the system of gender oppression. MIM longs for something truly different for wimmin in pop. We won't settle for Annie Lennox as some kind of path-breaker. Romance culture for the mature or the depressed or the different-looking is not enough change. Just because Christina Aguilera may be the reference point does not mean we cannot ask for or demand changes in music production. We're much better off with wimmin getting out there with the karaoke machine than to allow ourselves to be stuffed into the romance culture this way. See our theory magazine on gender oppression
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