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.
It's been eight years since Medusa, Annie Lennox's last studio album, was released. It's been 11 since her debut solo effort and five since the short-lived Eurythmics reunion. And while she may not be prolific, Lennox is always enigmatic. Bare is a collection of self-penned tracks, as the artist explains in the liners: "This album contains songs that are deeply personal and emotional. In a sense I have 'exposed' myself through the work to reveal aspects of an inner world that are fragile...broken through experience but not entirely smashed. I am not a young artist in their (sic) twenties. I am a mature woman facing up to the failed expectations of life and facing up to 'core' issues." Sound pretentious? One listen proves that Lennox lives up to her claims in spades. Here are 11 wholly -- even infectiously -- accessible, lyrically savvy, and gorgeously wrought pop songs full of spiritual and emotional depth that make for a deeply moving whole. On Bare, soul, adult contemporary, subtle yet unmistakable pop hooks, and an elegant use of electronic soundscapes converge in song styles to create not a tapestry, but a work of such interwoven depth that its only visual counterpart would be a fine Persian carpet. On "Wonderful," the refrain brings a Hall & Oates-styled Philly soul refrain to one of Lennox's trademark ballads constructed from repetitive fingerpicked electric guitar lines, a simple rhythm-machine loop, and gentle synth washes in the background. But it's in the lyrical paradox where the grain of her voice goes straight for a truth and need that the listener almost feels she's peeled off one layer too many -- not hers, ours: "I wanna hold you/And be so held back/Don't wanna need you/But it's where I'm at/Thinkin' about you every day/How come I was made that way...God it makes me so blue/Every time I think about you/All of the heat of my desire/Smokin' like some crazy fire/Come on here/Look at me/Where I stand/Can't you see my heart burning in my hands?/Do you want me? Do you not?" The previous track is a guitar-kissed ballad with limpid choruses that sear with the truth of having believed -- perhaps willingly -- each lie a lover ever told; it is destined to be played in every post-midnight, brokenhearted, half-empty bedroom for decades to come. And though the previous examples come from near the middle of the album, they don't begin to tell the whole story, as each track fits hand in glove with another. It not only can be taken as a whole, it must be, for it rains down on the heart of the listener with such a fierce life force, despite the depleted spirit exhibited in many of the cuts. There are no more words for the ravaged, triumphant Bare -- the truth of its fineness and devastating beauty is in the hearing. ~ Thom Jurek
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.

Rolling Stone (6/26/03, p.72) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...She has claimed a brand of stylish, postmodern soul singing--pained but detached, theatrical yet spare--as uniquely her own..."
Entertainment Weekly (6/13/03, p.96) - "...Amply effective in communicating the isolation, loneliness, and dread that dominate the singer's first solo album of original material since 1992's DIVA..." - Rating: B-
Uncut (6/03, p.118) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...Songs like 'Loneliness', 'The Saddest Song' and 'The Hurting Time' are as potent as the titles suggest....She's still a class act..."
Mojo (Publisher) (7/03, p.110) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...It recollects emotion with a raging tranquility....BARE is an album of stirring, stoic elegance. It's Lennox simply giving everything she's got..."