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Next up is "Savage," which is your darkest album, and you say it's your favorite. Why is that?

Because I like the dark stuff. It's very, very bruised. [Quotes lyrics] "Everything is fiction. All cynic to the bone."

That's a tough, tough lyric.

Well, I lived it. When you come out with a line like that, whether it's a good line or not, there was no real genuine reality that I could face, [somewhere where] I could lay my head down where it was safe and it was comfortable. Everything was jack.

"I Need a Man" was the first video you worked on with director Sophie Muller. She has said that you're more fearless in video than you are in real life.

She's right. There's a persona that comes from me and is written from me. It's expressing yourself, and it's brilliant. It's very freeing. It's like people go to Rio de Janeiro or Venice and they get dressed up and at that day or that moment, they are [the] king of salsa or whatever it is. And we should all have an opportunity to free ourselves in that way. When you're a child, you get to play-act and you get to be other things -- a lion or an Indian or whatever it was -- and we don't do that as adults.

"We Too Are One," which came out in 1989, was the beginning of the end for Eurythmics.

Me and Dave never ended. Me and Dave never said we'd split, and we never did split. We are very good friends, and that's a testament to something. And it's an ironic title, "We Too Are One," because we hadn't slept together in years. We were a couple, we did split up, and then we formed a duo, so it was very odd.

Do you look at that album fondly or as a troubled project?

I don't look at it at all. I don't look at any of them, to be honest.

How long after "We Too Are One" did you think, "I can make a record by myself," with the result being 1992's "Diva?"

I guess it wasn't until "Diva" was finally mixed. [Until then], it was a question mark. I thought I had it in me, and I thought it was absolutely essential that I stick my neck out and try to do it. Otherwise I wouldn't know who I was as a recording artist and a writer on my own without Dave. Because I'd always thought of Dave as my mentor, as my partner, Dave as my this or that. I needed to get to find my own persona without Dave. All of us have doubts. I'm a very doubting person.

"Diva" features "Legend in My Living Room," which is a narrative about when you were 17. You don't write many songs that are narratives.

Probably not. I wish I could. Like Sting is this consummate songwriter. I can make commentary on every subject if you ask me, but I don't try to do that commentary about the world in my songs. I write more about my inner world... I know it's all me, me, me, me. I know that. In some ways, it seems you are so self-obsessed, but actually, it is the only head I have. It is the only brain I have, so what else can I do with it? As long as I'm generous and loving and giving with other people, does it matter? As long as they get something from it. Do you know what I'm saying?

"Diva" started a long and fruitful working relationship with producer Stephen Lipson.

He came around to hear some of [my demos], and he said: "All right, then. I'll see you around." He left, and I thought, "Aw, he doesn't like them," and I almost slid down the back of the door and slumped down. When he left I was shattered. And then he rang me up and said, "When are we going to work together?" And I said, "I thought I was crap, wasn't I?" and he said, "No, they were great. They were fantastic." I needed to do this album. I needed to prove it.

The video for "Walking on Broken Glass" features John Malkovich and Hugh Laurie. You normally didn't have celebrities in your videos.

Somebody said, "John Malkovich is in town -- let's call him up." He said yes. I said, "That can't be!" But he showed up. I was too scared to speak to him. I kind of avoided him slightly. I just didn't know what to say: "How's the play going?" "What was the flight like over here?" I don't remember talking to him much, but we got along really well. He had to carry me down the stairs [in the video]. It was, like, so embarrassing to carry me. Poor man. He had to carry me -- how awful.

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