Annie Lennox  (born 25 December 1954) is a Scottish singer, songwriter, political activist, and philanthropist.  After achieving moderate success in the late 1970’s as part of the new wave band The Tourists, she and fellow musician Dave Stewart went on to achieve major international success in the 1980’s as Eurythmics.  With a total of eight Brit Awards, including Best British Female Artist six times, Lennox has won more than any other female artist.  Lennox embarked on a solo career in 1992 with her debut album, Diva, which produced several hit singles including “Why” and “Walking on Broken Glass”.  She has earned the distinction of “most successful female British artist in UK music history” due to her commercial success since the early 1980’s.  (More from Wikipedia)

I once wrote about Patti Smith in another connection that she “sounds like nothing so much as the Beat poets of the 1950’s”.  Despite their groundbreaking sound, Annie Lennox’s vocals for Eurythmics – who came onto the music scene at about the same time as Black Russian – sounded like a 1940’s chanteuse to me.  Similarly, Black Russian is a startling album from the very beginning of the lively decade of the 1980’s whose source is from a decade or two earlier.  In 2015, the album is not a bit passé but still sounds as fresh as it must have the day it was released; today, the album gives the listener a double dose of looking back. 

(April 2015/1)