Generally, the reality about pop music’s greatest works takes some time to disclose itself. Such is the case with “Love Is a Stranger,” the third single from Eurythmics’ 1983 album Candy Desires (Are Product of This).
The music heralded the band’s rise to superstardom — but it surely went nearly utterly unnoticed upon its preliminary single launch on Nov. 8, 1982.
Eurythmics’ origins date again to the mid-’70s when band members Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart met in London. She was from Scotland, had emigrated to London to check on the Royal Academy of Music and was supporting her musical profession by working in bars and eating places. He was English and had been obsessive about making rock ‘n’ roll since he’d first heard Robert Johnson’s King of the Delta Blues Singers at age 14.
The 2 started working collectively and shortly shaped the Vacationers, which loved modest success earlier than disbanding in 1980. Lennox and Stewart shaped Eurythmics the identical yr and launched their debut album, Within the Backyard, in 1981, watching in disappointment because it fizzled out.
Watch Eurythmics’ ‘Love Is a Stranger’ Video
Undeterred, the duo rented an attic room above a picture-framing store utilizing cash that Stewart secured by dressing up “like a businessman” and convincing a financial institution supervisor to provide him a mortgage, he defined in a 1983 interview with Musician journal. Drawing on the digital music affect they’d picked up in Germany, they developed a sound that was, as Stewart informed Traditional Pop journal, composed of “chilly, European, onerous, tough-sounding synthesizers with a soulful voice.”
This sound pervaded Eurythmics’ second album, Candy Desires (Are Product of This). The duo launched the opening observe on the album, “Love Is a Stranger,” as a single in November 1982. Simply because the songs from The Backyard had, it did not make an impression on the general public, topping out at No. 54 on the U.Ok. Singles Chart.
However this time, change was coming. Candy Desires‘ subsequent single and title observe grew to become not only a hit, however a sensation. With its spooky synthesizer beat and instant-classic music video — which highlighted Lennox’s androgynous model, together with close-cropped orange hair and a person’s go well with — “Candy Desires (Are Product of This)” launched Eurythmics into the pop-culture stratosphere upon its January 1983 launch.
But whereas “Candy Desires (Are Product of This)” is indubitably extra well-known, “Love Is a Stranger” is, in some ways, extra elementary to Eurythmics’ sound — and it may be the higher music.
Watch Eurythmics Carry out ‘Love Is a Stranger’ in 1989
It opens equally, with a driving beat overlaid by a synthesizer hook. However right here the melodic line is delicate and ethereal, in distinction to the gloomy, ominous “Candy Desires.” Lennox’s lithe vocals match the ethereal high quality of the music. “Love is a stranger in an open automobile,” she sings, “to tempt you in and drive you far-off.”
Because the music builds, it toes the road between cool remark and deep torment. Lennox maintains an air of detachment whereas warning of the perils of affection and heartbreak: “It is savage and it is merciless, and it shines like destruction … It is noble and it is brutal / It distorts and deranges / And it wrenches you up / And also you’re left like a zombie.” It is an icy music, certainly, but it surely’s additionally sensual and alluring, drawing listeners right into a world Lennox creates along with her voice.
Following the huge success of “Candy Desires (Are Product of This),” Eurythmics re-released “Love Is a Stranger” in 1983 with an accompanying music video. It fared higher the second time round, reaching No. 6 on the U.Ok. Singles Chart and No. 23 on the Billboard Sizzling 100. It was reissued as a single for the third time in 1991 to coincide with the discharge of Eurythmics’ Best Hits.
With every reissue, “Love Is a Stranger” continued to develop in stature, and it now incessantly ranks among the many band’s best songs. Except for its musical qualities, it additionally has an necessary place in Eurythmics’ story. It signaled their shift towards sensual, synth-driven pop that may anchor a lot of their profession. It was the opening observe on the album that may set up the duo as superstars, and it confirmed them at their songwriting peak — even when nearly everybody missed it the primary time.
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