Annie Lennox – No More “I Love You’s”

Annie Lennox’s biggest British solo hit was a 1986 flop by a duo who had once opened for Eurythmics.

No.58. That was as far as No More “I Love You’s” climbed on the British chart in 1986, sung by its co-writer David Freeman, who recorded it with his partner Joseph Hughes as the Lover Speaks. Nine years later Annie Lennox released her version as the first single from Medusa, and it entered the same chart at No.2, the highest a solo record of hers has ever reached in Britain. Most listeners still assume the song is hers. It belongs to a band that got within one connection of her and then disappeared.

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The connection was Dave Stewart. Freeman and Hughes had worked together in a punk outfit before forming the Lover Speaks in 1985, and they sent Stewart a demo tape. He signed them to his publishing company, Anxious Music, and passed the tape along. By way of Chrissie Hynde it reached producer Jimmy Iovine, who helped the duo sign with A&M in early 1986 and co-produced their only album. They took their name from the French critic Roland Barthes and his book A Lover’s Discourse, and the song came from the same place. Freeman later explained the idea. An “I love you” is usually answered with “I love you, too,” until the day it is met with silence, because the other person has nothing left to say back.

A&M released it as the duo’s debut single in 1986, and Smash Hits named it single of the fortnight. The public did not follow. The record stalled at No.58, the album failed to chart, and a 1988 reissue of the single went nowhere. In between, the Lover Speaks opened for Eurythmics on the Revenge World Tour. They split in 1988 without releasing a second album.

Nine Years Late, Right on Time

Lennox had written or co-written everything she had recorded up to then. Medusa was the exception: an album made entirely of other people’s songs, produced, like her solo debut Diva, by Stephen Lipson. RCA released No More “I Love You’s” as the lead single on February 6, 1995, a month ahead of the album, with her version of Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon on the B-side. The Official Charts Company ranked it No.2 in its first week, and it held that position for two weeks of a 12-week run. In America the Billboard Hot 100 took it to No.23.

The recognition followed the sales. Medusa entered the British album chart at No.1. The video was nominated for Best Female Video at the MTV Video Music Awards, and at the 1996 Grammy Awards Lennox won Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the song. That same year it earned a Brit Award nomination for Best British Single. A song its own writers could not sell had become the defining record of her solo career.

Fourteen years after its release she was still singing it. In 2009, the year of her retrospective The Annie Lennox Collection, she performed it for the BBC One Sessions, a performance her official channel has since released alongside the original video. Freeman released a solo version of his own song in 2010. The lyric is about language running out. The song’s history makes a related point. The words were the same in 1986 and 1995; what changed was who was singing them, and who was ready to listen.

Lennox’s 2009 BBC One Sessions performance: