Eurythmics - 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother)

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Music reviews of 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother)

Music Review: Musically it's OK, but thematically it's heavy-handed stuff.
Rating: 3 Stars

The music that appears on this album (faithfully plugged in the movie's closing credits), is, as the liner notes inform us, merely "derived from Eurythmics' original score for the film, 1984" (go figure). Suffice to say, "1984: For the Love of Big Brother" is not really a soundtrack per se but, more accurately, a collection of contemporary pop songs conceptually BASED on "Nineteen Eighty-four" (think of something along the lines of Madonna's "I'm Breathless" album for the movie "Dick Tracy" and you'll know what I mean), and as such, it doesn't entirely work.

Musically, this album has a certain appeal--it's all doomy, gloomy Teutonic synth mantras and martial electro-beats: if you like New Order or Kraftwerk or the late 70's Bowie-Eno collaborations you might go for this CD. Thematically though, this album is a bit hard to take, especially on two particular songs. The lyrics for "Sexcrime" and "Doubleplusgood" are preposterously silly in their naive, corny literal-mindedness. "Sexcrime" has a self-consciously Top-of-the-Pops-"hit-single"-circa- 1984 quality stamped all over it (the dreadful music video will make you cringe) and Annie Lennox's histrionic vocal obbligato just sounds crudely intrusive in this context. "Doubleplusgood," on the other hand, is even more egregious: it's a very thin, rather stupid, and bludgeoningly repetitive joke based on a trivial bit of background dialogue seriously intended in the film. Mercifully, neither track is featured in the film.

The one track that actually IS used--as a matter of fact, it serves consistently as the movie's romantic lietmotiv--is the gorgeous, haunting accoustic ballad, "Julia." It's a heart-breakingly lovely song that, miraculously, manages to ENHANCE the film's tremendous emotional impact in spades. But for no other reason, Eurythmics' otherwise dubious participation in the movie was worthwhile--this one stand-out six-and-a-half-minute track is the only compelling reason for owning this CD. I give "Julia" five stars, the rest of the songs, one or two, three at best. So, as you can see, I've split the difference in my overall rating.

I just wish that a proper soundtrack including the little sonic snippets of the used Eurythmics music and the whole of "Julia," as well as all of Dominic Muldowney's great, stirring score, was released instead of this generally self-indulgent and sometimes embarassing hodgepodge. What a pity it was not to be. At least they could come out with a CD single of "Julia."

Unless, you're a serious Eurythmics fan or completist, my advice would be to skip this CD--but by all means, for the love of Big Brother AND great art, buy, BUY the video of Radford's wonderful, stunning, passionate film. (You'll hear enough of "Julia" in the movie, and if you have any kind of aesthetic or emotional sensitivity at all, you won't be able to get it out of your head, believe me.)

Description of 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother)