Peace (Eurythmics album)

After their first performance together in eight years at a record company party in 1998, Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart began writing and recording together for the first time since 1989. After a benefit concert at the Institute of Contemporary Arts for the family of Ruth Picardie, a journalist who died of breast cancer, the duo convened at The Church Studios to write new music.^[3] The band had previously recorded their Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) album at the facility, which they had rented and converted into a recording studio.^[4][5] By the time they received news of their upcoming Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, the band had amassed half an album's worth of songs.^[3]

Much of the songwriting took place in the recording studio, where the two songwriters frequently restructured and rearranged their material. Stewart described the process as "creating a collage", where his rough melodic ideas and Lennox's lyrics would go through multiple iterations until they arrived at the final product.^[6] The band used a Marantz CDR640 CD recorder for the project, which Stewart selected because of its audio capabilities. "At the end of the session, I can take away a true representation of what we have done. I can listen to alternative mixes or listen back to a different arrangement in the car or at home and know I'm hearing the same thing that I hear in the studio."^[7]

The album's title was designed to reflect the duo's ongoing concern with global conflict and world peace. It was promoted with a concert on the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior II, where they played a mixture of old and new songs. A world tour, titled the Peacetour, followed soon after, with all profits donated to Amnesty International and Greenpeace.^[8] The final show of the tour, on 6 December 1999 at the London Docklands Arena, was filmed and released on VHS and DVD.

More information Review scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[9]
Entertainment Weekly	B+[10]
Houston Chronicle	[11]
Los Angeles Times	[12]
Rolling Stone	[13]
Slant Magazine	(2005 reissue)[14]

Close

Critics were generally impressed with the album, although NME commented that it "lacked the power" of their previous releases. Q magazine opined that the release of the album "quietly acknowledged that their solo careers had failed", despite the fact that both of Lennox's solo albums up to that point had reached number one in the UK and been certified multi-platinum in both the UK and US.

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Peace.^[15]