This may be a strange addition to a playlist that’s supposed to be for uplift, but hear me out:
When I was a kid, I often sat in the back of the family car zoning out and listening to the many mixtapes my dad plugged into the cassette deck, as the city lights flashed past my window. This obscure, brooding Eurythmics track is one of the songs that has stuck in my head.
I had no idea what the lyrics were about. But every time the song came on, I turned it, in my mind, into the soundtrack of the last few minutes of a science fiction film. I imagined a heroic fighter pilot, survivor of some great space battle, now drifting alone in a dead ship through the void: out of fuel, low on oxygen, and resigned to his fate ("no fear, no hate, no pain"). Things are looking grim for our hero.
But then, after the second chorus, the song suddenly shifts and opens up. Annie Lennox's glorious voice floats upward through the ether, like a soul rising. And I imagined an enormous mothership emerging from the blackness and opening its portal to receive my pilot into care and safety. Then the choruses return, and in my head the end credits roll.
Listening now, it's obvious to me that the song is definitely NOT about that. :-) But I still like the way its dark, synth-driven verses, with lyrics about awful mornings that feel like cold steel, give way to a transcendent moment of light. (Or a drug-fueled high, probably, given that this is an 80s pop song with "shoot it up" in the second verse. But let's ignore that, shall we?) Whatever the songwriters intended, I like how it evoked for young me, and still evokes for me now, the feeling of enduring a long night of trials and making it to daylight on the other side.
Thanks for reading this far; here's the song. I wonder if you can picture the film I imagined, if you listen with your eyes closed. Of course it's well worth watching with eyes open; the video is pure 80s, with Annie Lennox at peak Annie Lennox.
BONUS: If you'd prefer more of the greatest hits, here's an entire Eurythmics concert to enjoy (starts about 7 minutes in, if you want to skip the preliminaries):
Listen to this and previous Songs of the Day here.
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