I’ve Got a Life
Eurythmics
2005: RCA/Sony/BMG 82876748342
I’ve Got a Life
Eurythmics
2005: RCA/Sony/BMG 82876748352
I love it. My first time through hearing it I wasn’t sure where things were heading and found the opening a little uncompelling—Annie’s voice bemoaning the sorry state of the world is nothing new, after all. Ah, but it *is* new: this isn’t just Annie, this is Eurythmics, and that brings a certain crackling electricity into play; characteristically it’s also more than the sum of its parts (or partners, as is the case with Eurythmics), as their solo careers and other activities and lives all augment the process richly.
Lyrically and musically it grows from a tense, slightly-weary, and depressed intimacy to a cry of frustration bordering on despair that becomes a desperate self-assertion in the face of adversity…and then the booster rockets kick in and we get the cold tallying of realities tinged with passionate rage. And THEN comes the instrumental break and the whole puppy blows wide open with an excellent tapping of “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)” (I’d know those milk bottles anywhere!) and provides the flood of self-recognition that transforms the earlier desperation into a statement of power striding into a calm but profound confidence.
The video reflects this, somewhat obliquely, via the allegory of three “spaces”—I have no insider information about this song or video, only my own appraisal, but I see the three spaces as being 1. inside Annie’s head (possibly inside Eurythmics’s head, but it’s more familiar to me as an Annie place because of the angst) where she’s agonizing about the state of the world and her sense of helplessness, 2. a Eurythmics room of abstraction, exaggeration, media-manipulation, and style, and 3. a bizarre performance arena (inside the mirrorball) where it may be D&A on the upper stage providing the music but the main stage area is a bewildering array of other performers—I like to think of them as a representation of the “something” in the “Sweet Dreams” line “everybody’s looking for something,” because whether it’s a beefy leather-shorts-clad musclehunk or an old housewife with an overloaded shopping cart, a tribal-dancing Amerindian or a bimbette almost wearing a bikini, there’s an audience member down on the ground floor raving about them and dancing along.
As the scene intercuts between these spaces (and the shadow-and-light/blinds effect on Annie’s face in the first “space” is echoed in the performance arena’s dome lighting), I see this composite indicating that Annie’s found an unexpected new appreciation for her Eurythmics persona, and that in recognizing this she’s also acknowledging (but not flaunting so much as nodding towards) the far-reaching power of effect they have (both then and very possibly now). On a personal-message level, to me it says “your uniqueness may seem to isolate you but it’s also your strength, and you never know whom that might resonate with or help, so let yourself be yourself.” Again, that’s hardly new in the Eurythmics song catalogue, but it’s excellently delivered here anew and I am VERY grateful to Dave and Annie for this.
My two favorite moments from the single’s video are the first statement of the title, when the television screens framing Annie all flicker into action to show the “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)” video in a cascade of color and light, and Annie’s sly grin in the third chorus. The final image is a knockout, too, as suit-clad Annie bumps one hell of a sexy-yet-subtle hip out of the expected line.
(And why did I write all that and foist it on this main page? Because Annie asked for it, that’s why.)
Comments © 2005 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.