Diva (1992)

Diva is the debut solo studio album by Scottish singer Annie Lennox, released on 6 April 1992 by RCA Records. The album entered the UK Albums Chart at number one and has since sold over 1.2 million copies in the UK alone, being certified quadruple platinum. Diva was the 7th best selling album of 1992 in the United Kingdom. In the United States, it reached number 23 on the Billboard 200 and has been certified double platinum.

The album spawned five successful single releases, beginning with "Why" in March 1992, and followed by "Precious" in May, "Walking on Broken Glass" in August and "Cold" in October 1992. "Little Bird" was released in February 1993 as a double A-side with "Love Song for a Vampire", a song Lennox had recorded for the 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula. All five single releases reached the UK Top 30 (three of them Top 10), and achieved commercial success internationally.

Worldwide, Diva has sold over seven million copies, and won the Brit Award for British Album of the Year at the 1993 Brit Awards. The album received nominations for Album of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Long Form Music Video, winning the latter award at the Grammy Awards the same year. Diva has been described as "state-of-the-art soul pop" by Rolling Stone magazine, who also included the album in their "Essential Recordings of the '90s" list.

Background and recording

Following the informal dissolution of Eurythmics in 1990, Lennox took some time away from the music industry, during which she gave birth to her eldest daughter. She commenced working on her first solo album in 1991 with producer Stephen Lipson. Though she had been accustomed to co-writing material with Dave Stewart during her years with Eurythmics, eight of the ten tracks on Diva were written solely by Lennox herself, with two tracks being co-written by her. In a 1992 interview with BBC, Lennox claimed she had "two years when I didn't do anything", and confirmed that during that period she was doubtful as to whether she should write and record a solo album or not. She highlighted that after much deliberation, "it all came back to you are supposed to write songs", claiming that when she writes songs "it affirms who I am", citing it being "part of her identify". Upon its release, the album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and would eventually yield five hit singles, three of which reached the Top 10 (although they had continued to achieve number one albums, Eurythmics had not scored a UK Top 10 single since 1986). Diva was ultimately certified quadruple platinum in the UK, more than any of Eurythmics' studio albums.

The song "Keep Young and Beautiful" was included on the CD release as a bonus track (the original vinyl album had only ten tracks). Another bonus track, "Step by Step", appeared on the Mexican and Japanese editions of the album and was also included as the B-side on the single "Precious". The song was later recorded by Whitney Houston for the 1996 film soundtrack The Preacher's Wife and subsequently became a hit single.

The headdress worn by Lennox on the album's cover (and seen in several of the album's videos) was obtained from the London-based costume company Angels. It had been used previously in the James Bond film Octopussy. After giving birth to a stillborn son in 1988, Lennox gave birth to her eldest daughter in 1991 while she was working on Diva. The song "Money Can't Buy It" touches on the theme of motherhood, with the lyrics "I believe in the power of creation". Analysis of the lyrics would suggest that a mother's love for a child is greater than success, fame and money.

Composition

Speaking to the BBC in 1992, Lennox said that the song "Why" is "a deep dialogue with myself", stating that the song was inspired by ones lack of communication. At the end of the song, Lennox describes the ending as "a big rant", stating that she wrote that part of the song to affirm to others that she is not what she had often been portrayed by others to be. She described her writing technique for the ending of the song as a "denouncement of things that had been applied" to her up until that point in her career, further adding that she "reserves the right" to not let people know exactly who she is as a person. Lennox stated in the same interview that she wished for her creativity to be true during the writing of the album, stating, "if you are going to be creative you better be off the wall rather than sitting in the middle of it all feeling comfortable".