Bare [Bonus DVD]

Personnel: Annie Lennox (vocals, guitar, keyboards, programming); David Rainger, Tim Cansfield (guitar); Peter-John Vettesse (keyboards, drums); Steve Sidelnyk (programming); David Sinclair Whitaker; Pro Arte Orchestra.
Recorded at The Aquarium, London, England. Includes liner notes by Annie Lennox.
BARE was nominated for the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album.
Personnel: Annie Lennox (vocals, keyboards); Stephen Lipson (guitar, keyboards, programming); Tim Cansfield (guitar); Peter-John Vettese (keyboards, drums); Steve Sidelnyk (programming).
Audio Mixer: Heff Moraes.
Recording information: The Aquarium, London, England.
Photographer: Annie Lennox.
A true pop diva, Annie Lennox is a lady who doesn't like to be rushed. BARE is her third solo album in 11 years, and the first to contain new material since her first solo outing in 1992. Not to worry, though; she's still the same Annie you know and possibly love. Her songs are slowly, elegantly unfolding amalgams of pop and slow-jam R&B, and her strong, pliable voice fairly drips with emotional pain.
As on her breakthrough record DIVA, Lennox is an expert in the area of the torch song, laying out her heartbreak on a gossamer bed of sound surrounded by feathery pillows of strings and synthesizers. Whether or not you take the strikingly solipsistic liner notes seriously, it's easy to empathize with the anguish Lennox so stylishly expresses throughout BARE. Even when she lays all her cards on the table with "The Saddest Song I've Got," you feel pretty certain that she's still got more tricks up her sleeve that she hasn't even used yet.