Sweet Dreams: How Eurythmics Shocked America and Made MTV I New British Canon

Did you know there's now a new second channel exclusively for musical trivia shorts? TrashTheory2 ​! It's a minute long additional dose of Trash Theory every week. Subscribe now! When MTV first launched, there simply weren’t enough music videos to fill their 24 hour format. This forced the young channel to take a chance on previously-unknown-in-the-US artists to fill time. It paid off: within a couple of years a whole wave of videogenic British New Pop bands would take over the Billboard Chart

, almost single-handedly creating what was called The Second British Invasion. But even in the age of MTV, The Eurythmics were striking. Annie Lennox's orange close-cropped hair and sleek tailored suit stood apart from other female pop stars of the time. And the swirling darkness of their breakthrough single would define the sound of the 80s forever more. This is New British Canon and this is the story of “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” The Eurythmics starts with the classic tale of boy meets

girl. A bitter winter’s night and a flamboyantly haired boy outside a restaurant attempting to get a waitress’s attention via a marriage proposal written backwards on the window. That boy was Dave Stewart, a wandering wastrel and habitual LSD user who had made what little name he had as the guitarist of short-lived Elton John label signees Longdancer. The waitress was Annie Lennox, a Royal Academy of Music drop-out who had become disillusioned by the conformity of classical music after hearing

Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book. After finishing work that night, Lennox played for Stewart the haunting harmonium compositions she’d been working on, and from that moment on they were together romantically. Soon with former Longdancer member Peet Coombes they would form The Tourists just in time for the advent of London Punk, a movement the mid 20-something group were both too old and too musically literate to be embraced by. Through the prolific output of main songwriter Coombes, Tourists would r

elease three albums with RCA between 1979 and 1980. Despite supporting a reunited Roxy Music, their new wave power pop failed to ignite interest with the public at large, while the press became increasingly critical of the group’s eclectic sound. DJ tastemaker John Peel's decision to not play the band’s music on his show was deafening, to the point where he had to confirm in print that it wasn’t that he disliked the group, moreover he felt nothing for them. Despite the plethora of women active i

n New Wave and Post Punk, critics still saw Lennox as a novelty to be gawked at. "One critic came round to see me and he said to me, ‘We want to help women in rock, we want to do a piece on you’ ... in the most condescending way possible. And of course they do something and six pages later there’s a picture of Debbie Harry’s bum. It’s so fucking hypocritical, that. I know there’s no total subtlety anywhere in rock, but you can make room for a little intelligence. ‘Women in rock’ — if you say tha

t you’ve already said they’re something separate." In October 1979, The Tourists would make the soon-to-be fatal mistake of releasing a cover as a single. A new-wave revision of Dusty Springfield’s “I Only Want to Be With You,” it went to number four in the UK Charts, forever branding them as that quirky cover band. “The press absolutely slaughtered us and you can only take a beating for so long… ‘I Only Want To Be With You’ was such a massive hit and it went across the board to grannies and to

little kids of five. We were taken to the bloody cleaners for doing that bloody song and I swear to you we were not jumping on a bandwagon.” When the Tourists travelled to Australia in December 1980, Coombes would overdose in Sydney after the first show of the tour. He would survive, but effectively the band was over. The concept of the Eurythmics was born in a hotel room in New South Wales, Stewart fucking around with a second-hand Wasp synthesiser while Lennox sang along. “I could actually get

some interesting things happening. Y’know, like, sequenced little sort of random hold patterns that sounded very exciting to us, even though it was just coming out of the plastic speaker in a crappy hotel room in Wagga Wagga. We weren’t even writing songs, I was just messing about on it.” Also in Australia, Stewart stumbled upon a gold bracelet on the ground which he immediately pawned for an 8mm camera. From that moment on, when he wasn’t making music he was filming, becoming very aware of the

band’s visual identity. “The first Eurythmics video is ‘Never Gonna Cry Again.’ Annie comes out of the sea backwards and I come out of the sand and there’s a tea party on the beach and everything is on fire. It’s totally surreal.” After returning to the UK, the Eurythmics encountered nothing but hardships. The contracts they had signed with RCA while in The Tourists had saddled them with their former band’s debts, making it more or less impossible to move forward with their new project. Negotia

tions with their former, and now again current, label would take a whole year. To exacerbate the situation, after four years together Stewart and Lennox’s romantic relationship collapsed. Not having the funds to find separate living spaces, they awkwardly remained living together. "It was raw, because we were each other's best shot. I didn't want to work with anyone else. He didn't want to work with anyone else. So we became this duo and we were very, very focused." In the first half of 1981, th

e duo would travel to West Germany and record their debut album, In The Garden, with Kraftwerk producer Conny Plank, with whom they’d previously worked on the Tourists first album. “Conny just blew my mind because he reinforced the notion that it’s best if you don’t know what you’re doing. There are no rules.” Somewhat ahead of its time, Stewart sampled found sounds and collaged them into the album's soundscapes, while lead single "Never Gonna Cry Again"'s shivering synth-pop foreshadowed the b

and's later work. Despite their prior minor success in the Tourists, and a positive review from Smash Hits, the album did not chart. “Never Gonna Cry Again” barely scraped to number 63 in the UK singles chart. The ensuing tour was similarly dispiriting, the duo playing shows to as few as four people a night. This was further complicated by Stewart suffering from a collapsed lung that required surgery, while Lennox would go through an extended depressive episode. But Stewart was confident their b

ig break was just around the corner. Wanting a more vast array of equipment to achieve their vision on their second album, and still in debt to the record company, the couple literally went to the bank to secure a business loan. Though Stewart was on speed and Lennox in a depressive slump, they came away with £5000, enough to buy all the second-hand equipment they desired. Rather than returning to West Germany and working again with Conny Plank, it was decided that the Eurythmics would rent a ro

om above a picture framing shop in Chalk Farm in London and record their second album themselves with their own 8-track Portastudio. Unrestrained by studio fees, they were able to work at their own pace, allowing inspiration to hit them whenever. With Stewart abandoning his guitar altogether, his unfamiliarity with this new technology lent a freshness to the new songs. They dove into this new approach head first, spending £2000 of their loan on a prototype Movement MCS Percussion Computer. They

were so eager to get it that they spent a couple of nights sleeping on the inventor’s floor, waiting for it to be completed. But the primitive drum machine wasn’t the most user friendly. “It kept playing everything back to front, so the backbeat was playing on the first beat, like [sings opening riff of song with accent in unexpected place]. My friend who was with me was saying, "Hold on, I'll fix it." And I said, "No, no, it sounds great like that." As inspired as Stewart may have been and with

a new manic lease of life after surviving his lung operation, Lennox was not having a good time. As her former partner conjured impossible noises from his new kit, she lay despondent on the floor, more than aware of their dire financial situation and lack of prospects. “I thought it was the end of the road and that was that. We were trying to write, and I was miserable. And he just went, well, ‘I’ll do this anyway.’” With the boom-tick-tick-tick of his backwards percussion track, Stewart starte

d noodling with a potential synth bass part on a Roland SH-101, which instantly caught Lennox’s ear. “Annie sort of leapt off the floor and was like, ‘What is that?’ And she got on the [Oberheim] OB‑X. Annie had a string sound that we liked on there, and then she played that riff on top of what I was playing and the two synthesizers together with that drum beat made this unbelievable thing.” Lennox ad-libbed some lyrics over the top of the loop, inspired by their disillusionment with the record

industry, and the situation they had found themselves in. “From that first line, it’s not a happy song. It’s dark. ‘Sweet dreams are made of this’ is basically me saying: ‘Look at the state of us. How can it get worse?’ I was feeling very vulnerable. The song was an expression of how I felt: hopeless and nihilistic.” But before the whole song is consumed by Lennox’s desperate melancholy, Stewart spun a more hopeful bridge section, augmented with very DIY, twinkling percussion played on milk bott

les. "I suggested there had to be another bit, and that bit should be positive. So in the middle we added these chord changes rising upwards with ‘Hold your head up, moving on.’ To us it was a major breakthrough. It just goes from beginning to end and the whole song is a chorus, there is not one note that is not a hook." “Sweet Dreams” provided a template for their new sound: Stewart’s electronic European iciness paired with Lennox’s Motown and American Soul influenced vocals. They immediately w

rote up a manifesto for the future of the Eurythmics: "It would have a kind of a yes and a no. We would say yes to Motown, yes to electronic cold European, yes to men's suits. And then we would say no to heavy metal, no to girls' dresses… Every now and then, we'd consult the list if we thought we'd wandered off track. We'd look at it and say, ‘Oh, no wonder. Look, we're playing something that sounds like this and that's not on our yes list.’'" The Eurythmics instantly saw the power of “Sweet Dre

ams,” but their label RCA didn’t see it as a hit. Partly because of its darkness but also because it doesn’t seem to have an actual chorus – instead, it's a swirling mantra, starting with the title phrase. As such three other songs would be released as singles beforehand, all failed to make a significant dent on the charts. The only reason “Sweet Dreams” got a single release at all was because a DJ in Cleveland, Ohio started playing it and listeners could not get enough. “Sweet Dreams” was relea

sed at the end of January 1983. It would take two weeks to chart in the UK, entering at number 63. A Top of the Pops appearance a month later pushed the song into the Top Five. It would peak on the 19th March at number two, wedged between Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” But the element that allowed the Eurythmics to break through in the US was MTV. Launched in August 1981, it would change how music was consumed: music was no longer merely an audio

medium but a visual one too. Within two years, it would inadvertently launch a Second British Invasion of the Billboard Hot 100. Because Top of the Pops was the key way for artists to climb the British charts, by the late 70s a lot of UK acts, instead of travelling to London every week to make their appearance in person, would make a promotional video for the song. So they would still get the sales boost while avoiding disruption of their world tour. Due to this, by MTV’s launch night a signifi

cant number of videos available for broadcast were from British artists. And though the channel was kickstarted with the New Wave “Video Killed The Radio Star,” most clips conformed to the safe Soft Rock/AOR format. Problem was that these videos weren’t the most interesting to watch, most being live performances. Over the next two years, image-conscious “New Pop” groups like Adam and the Ants, Visage, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, A Flock of Seagulls and Culture Club would take over to the point

where in mid-July 1983, six of the US Billboard Top 10 were British acts, including The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” at the top spot. And the Eurythmics were going to ride this wave to the bank. The "Sweet Dreams"' video saw the band dressed as the record industry suits who had been making the duo’s lives hell, but with surrealist touches like a cow wandering the board room. “I presented the treatment to the label, and they could not understand the bit with the cow. The cow was complicated,

because we were in London, and the cow had to go down an elevator into a basement. The farmer who owned the cow was really agitated.” Stewart has claimed that the presence of the cow was partly inspired by the Luis Buñuel film, L'Age d'Or. But the most striking element was Lennox's borderline S&M appearance: close-cropped, vibrant orange hair, a tailored men’s suit and wielding an office pointer like a riding crop. The accompanying line only added to the persona: “I was trying to be the opposit

e of the cliche of the female singer. I wanted to be as strong as a man, equal to Dave and perceived that way. Wearing wigs and taking them off again was about the affectations that women create to become acceptable or beautiful to men, about removing masks and how none of it is real.” Androgyny in pop music was not new: Bowie had famously crossdressed in his 1979 video for "Boys Keep Swinging," while Boy George of Culture Club was a staple of early MTV. But Lennox's very male look made Middle A

merica lose their minds. Unfounded rumours circulated about Lennox having had a sex change, while MTV pulled the video for “Love is a Stranger” midway through its US premiere, after she removed her wig and MTV concluded she was a cross-dresser and not suitable for broadcast. The video, in which Lennox donned both feminine and masculine looks, was effectively banned until she was able to produce a birth certificate to confirm her sex. As such, her relationship with the press was strained at best.

"A lot of the time, I came across as quite defensive and chilly. I was provocative and I wanted to make people think about gender issues. But it was actually tough being called a ‘gender bender’ because the press often used the term like an undermining insult. The orientation of my sexuality was constantly up for grabs.” But because of the hype behind the video, “Sweet Dreams” would displace the Police from the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Lennox would appear on the cover of Newsweek with Boy

George. She even performed "Sweet Dreams" at the 1984 Grammys in full male drag, complete with Elvis-style quiff and sideburns. With Duran Duran, Culture Club, Thompson Twins and Wham! also making significant in-roads in the States, British New Pop had taken over. The Eurythmics spent the rest of 1983 touring the world, had to decline an offer to support Bowie on his Serious Moonlight tour and released their follow-up, Touch, in November. Written on the road using their lo-fi set-up, the album w

as finished in three weeks, and thanks to its clutch of MTV hits, soon went platinum in the UK, US, Canada and New Zealand. They released albums at an accelerated rate for the rest of the 80s, totalling eight albums in eight years, 75 million albums sold worldwide and twenty-four singles in the UK Top 40. Eurythmics would call it quits after the tour for 1989’s We Too Are One. "We sort of left saying maybe, maybe not. But to be quite honest Dave and I had got quite heartily sick of each other. A

nd I say that in an affectionate way. We had an overdose of each other, didn't we? Living together, then splitting up but staying together as Eurythmics. Oh dear. We had so many years in each other's pockets, we need some space. Lots and lots of space." Afterwards Lennox would embark on her solo career, while Stewart would spend his time on various production gigs and writing projects. Being one of the last British synth-pop bands to breakthrough, their influence is felt more subtly than the lik

es of The Human League, Depeche Mode and Soft Cell. But the DIY-origins of “Sweet Dreams” became legend. That a song created with minimal kit, in a room above a frame store, could go toe-to-toe with the big-budget productions of Michael Jackson, was revelatory to a new breed of bedroom producers. “Sweet Dreams” disregard for pop structure, merely a trance-like obsession with a synthetic beat, would become a stepping stone between “I Feel Love” and Chicago House. While female pop stars that have

worn a suit onstage, from Madonna to Self Esteem, have probably taken style notes from Lennox. The Eurythmics are also one of only three British New Pop bands that have been inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, alongside Depeche Mode and Duran Duran. “Sweet Dreams” has become a standard, artists from all genres willing to be consumed by the song, whether covering it or sampling its beguiling essence. Most are more than happy to over-emphasise the moodiness of the piece while never being

able to compete with the nihilism of the original track. It was a song born out of their struggles with the music machine that launched them to the highest reaches of the international charts, formed of purest desperation, depression and debt. And yet when that beat is unleashed at the club, the wedding reception, even the supermarket, you go to the dancefloor. Yes you do. Yes you do. Who are you to disagree? Thanks for watching. If you liked this video, like, subscribe and why don’t you also

do me a favour and share it with a couple of people. It really does help. Also check out the second channel, the link is onscreen and in the description. And as always, I’d like to shout out my supporters over on Patreon. Thank you so very much. And I’ll see you in three weeks time for whatever is next.