Biography:

Few artists have imagined a body of work that is at once as intimate and universal as the one created by Annie Lennox. She is a peerless singer, writer and performer who has courageously channeled her personal joys and sorrows into her soulful music. In turn, her songs form the soundtrack of our collective lives.

Now, for the first time, the greatest hits from the most successful female British artist in pop music history are available on The Annie Lennox Collection. This 14-song retrospective brings together her finest solo work and two new songs available exclusively on this release.

For Lennox, handpicking the songs for the collection meant creating something wonderful for her fans, like a perfect new dish made from their favorite ingredients: “You take selected cuts and there’s this new menu,” she says. “It’s like delivering a meal. It’s for people who love my music and want the choice cuts.”

And what cuts they are. Spanning 15 years, The Annie Lennox Collection includes hits from her four top-selling solo albums Diva (1992), Medusa (1995), Bare (2003) and last year’s highly praised Songs of Mass Destruction. The timeless music selected for this collection uniquely reflects the essence of the singer’s instantly recognizable brand of soul music on tracks like “Why,” “Walking on Broken Glass” and “No More ‘I Love You’s’” — a song that earned Lennox one of her four Grammys.

Reflecting on her song canon, Lennox self-deprecatingly says, “They’re aging well… Like me! I only ever wanted to create inspirational music. That’s It.

On a more serious note, the intelligent, insightful tunes reflect Lennox’s belief in the transcendent nature of music. “I’m fairly grounded as a human being, but there’s another part of me that engages with the potentiality of music, melody, colour and sound, and “I’m profoundly grateful to have been able to express myself through this exquisite medium,” she says.

In her 26-year career, both as a member of the groundbreaking Eurythmics and as a solo artist, the Scottish lass born on Christmas Day has amassed sales of more than 78 million albums worldwide. Her towering achievements also include 34 hit singles, four Grammy Awards, 11 Brit Awards and five Ivor Novello Awards. The superstar has also won an Academy Award and two Golden Globes.

As brilliant as her work with her Eurythmics partner Dave Stewart was, her solo work has been transformative for both Lennox and her legion of listeners. It’s daunting to think that it may have never happened. She and Stewart started a protracted hiatus in 1990. Lennox became somewhat tired of the roller coaster.” I just needed a break,” she says, “ and I wanted to have a family.” The notion of a solo record was borne out of curiosity more than anything else. “I’d always worked exclusively with Dave, and I didn’t see how I could do anything without him,” she recalls. “I lacked the courage or the confidence. But then, I just wanted to see if I could do it on my own.” The result was the stunningly beautiful “Diva.”

Over the years, Lennox has increasingly divided her time between her music and her humanitarian efforts. “I’ve really put my foot down on the pedal recently,” she says. “My position is very unusual. You have experts in the field and then you have the person in the streets, who might not know too much about the issues, and then you have someone like me in the middle, who can be the connecting LINK through my involvement. I can use my platform to campaign for the greater good.”

The dynamic activist recently received the Red Cross Services to Humanity Award, was named the 2008 Glamour Inspirational Woman of the Year and performed with the agape choir for Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday celebration this summer in London Lennox recently attended the international aids conference in Mexico City as an Oxfam ambassador.