Annie Lennox
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2008
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is one of our most successful singer-songwriters, Annie Lennox. Her extraordinary voice has captivated us for more than a quarter of a century and, as one half of the group Eurythmics and as a solo artist, she's sold tens of millions of records and won fistfuls of awards. As a teenager, her musical ability was her passport out of her home town of Aberdeen. At that point, a career as a flautist beckoned: but, after studying in London, she felt she could never make her mark as a classical musician. It was a chance encounter with aspiring pop-star Dave Stewart that set her on an entirely different path.
For much of the 1980s, all her creative energy went into making music. But when her children were born, she says, her priorities shifted. Now she devotes much of her time and energy to supporting different humanitarian causes. She says: "I need to find meaning in my life to make me happy; and that's been an ongoing struggle."
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: I Say A Little Prayer by Aretha Franklin Book: Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle Luxury: Suncream.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. |
| 0:05.0 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.0 | The program was originally broadcast in 2008. My castaway this week is Annie Lennox. As a pop star she has seen phenomenal success. |
| 0:33.4 | Her extraordinary voice and stark glamour blazed a trail through the 80s, when as one half of the |
| 0:38.1 | group Eurythics, she co-wrote and performed hit after hit after hit. |
| 0:43.0 | Going it alone, she has soared just as high. |
| 0:45.8 | Three Grammys, six Brits and an Oscar |
| 0:47.9 | provide convenient shorthand to sum up her solo achievements to date. |
| 0:52.0 | Yet it seems, fame, fortune and the adoration of millions isn't |
| 0:56.0 | quite enough. Much of her time and energy these days is devoted not just to her two teenage |
| 1:00.6 | daughters, but a clutch of humanitarian causes from Live 8 to Amnesty International. |
| 1:06.6 | She says, I need to find meaning in my life to make me happy, and that has been an ongoing struggle. Annie Lennox, you once described yourself, |
| 1:15.0 | this is an intriguing phrase, as an elegant survivor. |
| 1:18.0 | I wonder what you mean by an elegant survivor. |
| 1:21.0 | Not an interesting question to land me with, first of all, an elegant survivor. |
| 1:27.0 | Yeah, I think perhaps sometimes, you know, it's very interesting when you are someone in the public eye, you have to accept that there will be a certain erosion of your own sort of private |
| 1:36.9 | what would normally people would consider to be private and I don't know why I said the |
| 1:41.6 | word elegant but perhaps I was trying to get the balance back and it sort of pull that back for myself from because you know the press will inevitably and I don't blame them for this they will look for the most kind of well if they can get |
| 1:53.8 | lured he will have lured with me it hasn't been lured but it you know whenever it's |
| 1:58.2 | been something to do with you know depression or the kind of things that I have been occasionally tagged with which is fine because I do get depressed and |
| 2:06.8 | People do get depressed but I did feel that I might have to claw a little bit back of the labeling perhaps that's been put on me from time to time. |
| 2:15.0 | Did you wish sometimes that you hadn't been quite as honest as you find yourself being as journalist? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.