Magazine Articles > The Sunday Mirror Source:
Sunday Mirror (UK newspaper) : Sunday, November 8th, '87.
'Most women singers are just treated as sex objects'
ANNIE'S SAVAGE WORLD OF ROCKSinger Annie Lennox has accused the pop world of giving women a raw deal.
"With few exceptions they are just regarded as some sort of sex object," she says.
Annie, who with her Eurythmics partner Dave Stewart has a new album out tomorrow called Savage, tells how how she set out to avoid that trap.
"I knew that if I were just to be presented as an attractive girl singer, maybe a bit sexy, I would never be satisfied.
"So I thought carefully how I could avoid that image if woman-as-sex-object.
"I'm not afraid of looking unattractive, unglamorous, so I brought my sexuality more to the masculine side. I wasn't scared to combine the two genders and it gave me much more freedom.
Prostitutes
"It's not the real me. It's like when I see a line of prostitutes. They're fascinating because they're just ordinary women who have managed to detach an intimate part of themselves to make money and exist in the way they choose."
Eurythmics backing singer Joneice Jameson definately can't exist how she chooses and her plight angers Annie.
"She is one of the best singers I've ever heard." she says. "She signed a contract before she met us and now she is a virtual slave.
"The people in the music industry have forced her to record and promote material so disgusting, so far beneath her capabilities, you wouldn't believe it.
"This is the sort of thing that can happen to women on their own. Their hands can be tied for years. In any New York club you'll find women performing the old standards fifty times better than I can sing, but who just haven't met anybody with a sincere, intelligent interest in them."
The Savage album features a picture of Annie looking less than flattering. But she says: "The picture is a strange mixture of beauty and ugliness and I think it expresses the sense within the album of tragedy, brittleness and vulnerability."
Interview by Alan Jackson, New Musical Express.