Angst For Art's Sake

By RICHARD CORLISS

PERFORMER: ANNIE LENNOX

ALBUM: DIVA

LABEL: ARISTA

THE BOTTOM LINE: In this superb collection of searingly sad songs, she has found her authentic, artistic self.

THE ALBUM'S TITLE IS COMpletely ironic," Annie Lennox says of Diva. That sounds about right. From the moment 10 years ago when the young Englishwoman in the orange crew cut emerged as half of the hitmaking Eurythmics, artifice has seemed her form of art. Like David Bowie before her and Madonna just after, Lennox brought a chameleonic theatricality to pop music. Each new Eurythmics video presented a new Annie: the vamp, the gigolo, the ambassadress from another planet. So why not, for her first album without longtime partner Dave Stewart, the diva? In the videos she can wear beaded gowns and Victorian hats, feathers and angel wings, white tie and tails. Another opening, another dozen roles. Ironic, no?

No. She must have meant iconic. For what is a diva but a singer -- Callas in opera, Garland on the screen -- whose mission is to suffer, and to interpret suffering, for her faithful? Last we heard, Lennox was agreeably married, but that's not our business; besides, it's irrelevant to the authenticity of the pain in her strong and subtle alto pipes. What she has done in Diva is to marry that voice to a sheaf of memorable songs that map the doleful soul of a modern woman. This is angst for art's sake, something she can believe in and make believable while the mike and the camera are on. At home, if it pleases her, she can watch TV, eat ice cream, be happy.

True to its title, the album contains no guest duets by visiting pop royalty. All the voices -- the doo-wopping backup singers, the chanting imam, the heavenly choir -- are Lennox's. And in seven of the eight videos made of songs in the set, Lennox is seen alone; her only company is her image in the mirror. There's plenty of variety in Lennox's music (long-lined ballads, driving Euro-pop, plaints in the French style), but the tone is consistently, nicely rueful. The sunniest tune, with a piano chirping in a Caribbean accent, is called Walking on Broken Glass. With self-absorption comes the dramatizing of the diva's ego. No one has experienced or endured what she has; no one has been so mad, bad or sad. The woman in these songs is "blind, viciously unkind" (Why), "cynical, twisted" (Precious). If Emily Dickinson were to show up at the Betty Ford Center, she might testify, as Lennox does in Legend in My Living Room, "I've shed my tears in bitter drops/ Until the thorn trees bloomed/ To take the spiky fruit to crown/ Myself the Queen of Doom." The whole glorious album plays like an atonement for the excesses of the '80s. The punishment is remembrance.

The woman in these songs drags her notorious past around as if it were a fur coat worn too long in the rain. She is someone who has done everything and now wants to feel anything. Each disappointment is a station of the cross leading to a Calvary with no payoff: "Ashes to ashes, rust to dust, this is what becomes of us" (Primitive). At the end she is withered, regretful, a little wiser, like a Samuel Beckett creature on her deathbed. She knows this last journey will be a vacation: "Dying is easy. It's living that scares me to death" (Cold).

The vision is bleak; the achievement is cause for celebration. In producer Stephen Lipson's pristine settings, Lennox's voice is encouraged to capture passion with precision, and her songs are given room to grow. The best of this exemplary batch, Money Can't Buy It, ricochets through five catchy musical themes: taunting, exhorting, elegiac, cynical (an urgent "rich white girl's" rap) and finally inspirational. "I believe in the power of creation. I believe in the good vibration." It's a bromide that, after all the bad vibes in its wake, rings like a good truth. In creating and fulfilling the new role of diva, ironically or dead serious, Annie Lennox has found her artistic self.