I was fifteen in the Australian fall of 1992.
Living in a small country town – dreading school, resisting isolation and feeling lost, to say the least.
One source of relief was the quarterly arrival of the DnA fanclub packet. Twenty years ago, it took a lifetime for mail to make it’s way to small towns down under, so I was usually the last to learn the latest e news.
I was heartbroken when the “final” packet arrived, announcing the closure of the club and insinuating Eurythmics were no longer. I was confused as I hadn’t heard any official word of what had happened.
A brief mention in the final fanclub newsletter of a solo adventure for Annie felt like a brush off. Perhaps a way of dampening the blow, and I didn’t really believe it would happen.
Yet, soon after this, a classmate at school told me they “thought” they saw a new Annie Lennox video on television. I couldn’t fathom that they could be so uncertain about such an idea, and I spent the following days scouring the very few channels we had, clutching to the hopes that my school friend had, in fact, seen our Annie.
Almost a week had passed, and I’d found nothing. I began zipping between static radio stations frantically – listening intently and wondering whether the next track could be Annie herself. Or the next, or the next. But her unmistakeable voice was nowhere to be heard.
I began doubting my classmate’s claims, and gave up searching.
And then it happened. My brother came home from the mall and broke the news to me.
“There’s a new Annie Lennox album in the music shop”. I didn’t say anything. I just looked at my mother with desperation and she knew. Knowing my painstaking adoration for the lady in question, my Mum kindly drove me to the mall, giving me extra money to purchase my very own CD copy of Diva.
I read all the lyrics on the way home in the car, bursting with anticipation at how they might sound in Annie’s voice. I listened over and over and over to the point where my entire family became as addicted as I.
When I discovered there was an accompanying video album, it was as if my every wish was being granted.
Diva, for me, became my ultimate desert island disc. The one masterpiece I could never live without, and the direct inspiration to sing and perform in my own capacity. It contributed to so many facets of my life, and I can’t imagine music without it. Not then, and not now, twenty years on.