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DECEMBER 2010 | RAGE monthly 37


LENNOX ANNIE BRINGS FORTH A CHRISTMAS CORNUCOPIA by bill biss Annie Lennox’s musical vision couldn’t be more right on track in her latest collection of holiday songs. The selection of


material she chose, harks back to the true meaning of the Christmas season. These are songs that she remembers singing as a child and her musical and vocal skills shine as bright as an evening star. Her A Christmas Cornucopia has captured an essence of revitalization, reverence and spirit in both tone and structure. The Rage Monthly got an early holiday gift speaking with humanitarian, activist and entertainment icon, Annie Lennox.


The Rage Monthly: You recently were honored at the Harper’s Bazaar Women Of The Year Awards with a lifetime achievement award. Congratulations…it’s well deserved. Annie Lennox: Thank you. There have been a few awards like that this


year and they’ve just come out of the blue. It’s very heartening and lovely to be recognized for the work that you do, and I’m really thrilled to bits about that. GQ magazine also very sweetly gave me a kind of lifetime achievement award in Berlin. You never expect these things, and you certainly don’t work to get awards. But it’s nice when they come.


Rage: Your Christmas album is excellent and uniquely beautiful. Was this something you wanted to create for a while? AL: I always wanted to do it. It was just timely. I’d run out of contract, and


it was like, okay—let’s just take a breath, take stock. What am I going to do next? And of course I kept my cards very close to my chest because I don’t want people anticipating what I’m going to do next. I want to do it in my own way without people speculating this, that or the other. I knew it would be a surprise when people heard it was going to be a Christmas album, but that’s what I like. I like to surprise people, and I like to do my own thing in


my own way. Rage: The cover of A Christmas Cornucopia has a very vintage design. It looks like a holiday card from the Victorian age. AL: Absolutely. That’s exactly what I wanted it to look like. I wanted it


very much to look like something from the past, something that could be collectible, like a memento. If you were thinking of Christmas, what would be the essential spirit of the thing? It really does go back to Victorian times di- rectly, because Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, was German and he brought this whole culture of exchanging cards and presents. And the Yule log and, subsequently, the Christmas tree all came through him, apparently. Christmas started to be really more formally celebrated by the Victorians. I really wanted that, because at Christmas time, people want to get in touch with something of the past, something traditional. I just felt I wanted to take it back to its roots, really.


Rage: In addition to the holiday songs of old, you also wrote a new song on this called “Universal Child.” Did you write the song while you were recording this particular album?


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