"Beethoven (I Love To Listen To)" by Eurythmics

This song doesn't have much to do with Beethoven - aside from his name in the title and a snippet from one of his famous melodies in the tune - but I can't help myself at this point; I'm a blogging fool. It must be all that banging my head on the desk I do for...  Er.  Inspiration.

From my personal favourite Eurythmics album, Savage, it's Beethoven (I Love to Listen to). The video was directed by Sophie Müller as part of a movie-length project which I first saw in 1990 and have never forgotten; this particular video occurs at the beginning of a three-video arc - alongside I Need A Man, and You Have Placed A Chill In My Heart.

Watch as a drab housewife (played to the hilt by famed hilt-player Annie Lennox) who is haunted by her childhood self and inner glamazon and - either loopy from the fumes of household solvents or else ready to check herself into the Laughing Academy - wigs out (quite literally) and breaks her shackles with a persona not unlike Courtney Love, only not scary.

It's still only available on VHS, though. To which I say: if those responsible don't soon put this amazing piece of work out on DVD I may have a breakdown like the one in this video, find those responsible, and have words with them. And as good a look as this is on Annie Lennox, well, that's how awful it looks on me. You've been warned.
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Bonus Video: "There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)" by Eurythmics

Apropo of the last post, guess what?!  The relatively recent innovation of VEVO has allowed for the embedding of oodles of scrumptious video content, including the above...  So I guess it turns out that some record company executives have decided to enter the digital age after all.  That just leaves the dinosaurs at Warner and EMI to play catch up or risk becoming extinct.

Even though it's technically Dave Stewart's birthday I feel like the one who's been given a present!
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"There Must Be An Angel (Live)" by Eurythmics

Well! Trying to find a Eurythmics video to post here was even harder than finding a Cyndi Lauper video a couple of months ago; it seems that record executives still haven't found it in the dessicated wallets they use for hearts to allow citizen journalists like yours truly to promote their merchandise for free. Come on guys! All I ask for is the occasional embed code now and then, so I have the chance to fawn over the long-since profitable product in your back catalogue. It's not exactly like I'm wallowing in promotional merchandise here like the big boys...

Fortunately the BBC isn't quite such a dragon about hoarding its wealth, and to mark the birthday of David A. Stewart I was able to find this exquisite deconstruction of one of the duo's earliest hits - There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)* from their 1985 fifth album Be Yourself Tonight - performed live on Parkinson by the birthday boy himself and the always stellar Annie Lennox. Awesome as this is, though, the original video features Stewart tricked out in an actual oodle of Sun King finery; not letting me post that, given the content of this blog, is nothing short of a hate crime. In fact, I think I'll call Strasbourg right now...

*Amazingly, this song was the Eurythmics' only UK #1.
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"Julia" by Eurythmics

A Eurythmics video is one of those things I need very little provocation to post; to whit, today is the anniversary of the publication of George Orwell's spooky (not to mention eerily prescient) novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Eurythmics contributed music to Michael Radford's movie version of the novel - music which he disliked, and later refused to incorporate into the finished film; undismayed, the duo released the album anyway, since it was 1984 and the book was experiencing something of a resurgence in popular culture. Today, among Eurythmics fans at least, it's considered one of their best.

1984 (For the Love of Big Brother) contains many haunting and ethereal tracks drawn from the original text, including this one; named for the woman with whom Winston Smith carries on an illicit affair which provides his downfall, Julia is a pop song rendered most elegant by Dave Stewart's low-key arrangement and Annie Lennox's ethereal voice.
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