Annie Lennox: Enjoying Life Now that the Children are Older
Some baby boomers say they are enjoying a period of intense creativity and inspiration now that their children are largely raised. There is more time to reflect on your life and reengage in activities you enjoy.
Singer and songwriter Annie Lennox appears to be thoroughly enjoying this period in life. “Of course now I'm in that middle-age place, age-wise, and youth is no longer really something that I'm a part of anymore. And that started happening for me when I was about 40, to be honest with you. I had my kids and my focus went elsewhere. And I think I've changed so much through having children ... inside myself. It's been a kind of evolution and a maturity,” Lennox told CNN.
The 54-year-old artist oversaw the release of her greatest-hit album, The Annie Lennox Collection, yesterday. It includes songs that made her famous such as Walking On Broken Glass and No More I Love You's' and two new tracks. She also launched a new music video, Shining Light, a cover of Irish band Ash's hit song, in which she struts and jives in a form-fitting white suit amidst psychedelic colors.
The star took great pains during her working life to shield her two children, now both teenagers, from the spotlight. “Part of my work is public, but I make a distinction between that and who I am as a person in private," she told CNN. "I was very careful that ...I wasn't telling stories to gossip papers, and showing my life and [my children] were gently kept away from that."
Annie Lennox (born 25 December 1954) is a Scottish born British musician, vocalist and Academy Award-winning songwriter. She is both a solo artist and the lead singer of the musical duo Eurythmics, hailed as "The Greatest White Soul Singer Alive" by members of the rock industry on the VH1 show 100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll in 1999. Rolling Stone magazine also named her as one of their 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. Both as a solo artist and with Eurythmics, Lennox has sold over 80 million records. Lennox is also a political and social activist, leading such events as a pro-Palestinian rally in London January 3, 2009; she has also objected to the unauthorised use of her song I Saved the World Today, in an election broadcast for Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.] Her vocal range is contralto.
