Savage

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.