touch

Eurythmics painted a rumor and cemented their place pop history with the expansive electronic experimentation of this stylish pop sequel.  The duo of Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart had found worldwide success with their sophomore album 'Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)' and struck while the iron was hot, going right into their studio that they had just set up.   Stewart recalls:  “We made 'Touch' very quickly recording it upstairs in the Church Studios in Crouch End. We made it so quickly in fact that they hadn’t actually finished the studio and Michael Kamen ended up conducting the orchestra in the corridor...The first cheque I ever got was for 'Sweet Dreams' and I’d always dreamed of going to the Caribbean. So I booked a flight and arrived on Christmas Eve and I spent the night on the beach thinking, ‘What am I doing here?’  Before 'Touch' we were focused on an icy, cold, electronic, European type of music and the success of 'Sweet Dreams' meant that we could experiment. We were free in our minds and we didn’t have to repeat ourselves.”

'Touch' features Annie Lennox on vocals, flute, percussion, and keyboard; Dave Stewart on vocals, dulcimer, bass, guitar, drum programming, keyboard, and xylophone;    with Dick Cuthell on trumpet, cornet, and flugelhorn; Martin Dobson on baritone saxophone; Dean Garcia (later of Curve) on bass; and Michael Kamen  conducting the British Philharmonic on strings.  Kamen did the string arrangements and Stewart and Lennox were arrangers for the album.  Stewart produced the sessions with engineer Jon Bavin.   

'Touch' surpassed the success of 'Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)' by going to number twenty in France, fourteen in Switzerland, nine in Germany and Sweden, eight in Norway, seven in the US, four in Australia, and number one in New Zealand and the UK.    Lennox looks back on Stewart's influence on her:   "Wherever he is, whoever he's with, he's not fazed by anything at all.  He's fearless in that sense. And when it comes to music-making he's a facilitator...I didn't have the drive. I didn't have the self-belief....I was actually content to be defined as half of a duo... I really divested my own independent, individual self into being one half of a duo. In fact I didn't often say 'I'. I would quite purposely say 'we'. It seemed appropriate."





http://eurythmics.com/


http://davestewart.com/



http://www.annielennox.com/


http://www.eurythmics-ultimate.com/







"Here Comes the Rain Again"  
Stewart says he and Lennox wrote this sweeping mini epic when they were staying at the Mayflower Hotel in New York City:   "I'd been out on 46th Street and bought an early Casio keyboard, about 20 inches long with very small keys. It was an overcast day. Annie was sitting in my room, and I was playing some little riff on the keyboard sitting on the window ledge, and I was playing these little melancholy A minor-ish chords with the B note in it. I kept on playing this riff, and Annie was looking out the window at the slate grey sky above the New York skyline and just sang spontaneously, 'Here Comes The Rain Again.' And that was all we needed. you see, like with a lot of our songs, you only need to start with that one line, and that one atmosphere, that one note, or that intro melody. And the rest of it was like a puzzle where we needed to just fill in the missing pieces...'Here Comes The Rain Again' is kind of a perfect one where it has a mixture of things, because I'm playing a b-minor, but then I change it to put a b-natural in, and so it kind of feels like that minor is suspended, or major. So it's kind of a weird course. And of course that starts the whole song, and the whole song was about that undecided thing, like here comes depression, or here comes that downward spiral. But then it goes, 'so talk to me like lovers do.' It's the wandering in and out of melancholy, a dark beauty that sort of is like the rose that's when it's darkest unfolding and bloodred just before the garden, dies. And capturing that in kind of oblique statements and sentiments."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzFnYcIqj6I









"Right By Your Side"  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY_6ejm0AX0









"Who's That Girl?"  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5iDKWV6Chg









"No Fear, No Hate, No Pain (No Broken Hearts)"  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoCGygFAIGo



"Paint a Rumour"  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuTq-r51LS4







'Touch'full album:




All tracks written by Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart


1. "Here Comes the Rain Again"   4:54
2. "Regrets"   4:43
3. "Right By Your Side"   4:05
4. "Cool Blue"   4:48
5. "Who's That Girl?"   4:46
6. "The First Cut"   4:44
7. "Aqua"   4:36
8. "No Fear, No Hate, No Pain (No Broken Hearts)"   5:24
9. "Paint a Rumour"   7:30