Posted 1:47 AM by sport

(sic)
I'm thinking of suing. Here are the genuine, verbatim liner notes from the new Annie Lennox album "Bare." They printed these right on the back cover.

"This is just by means of a small description to illustrate my thoughts and feelings about the particular image I've chosen for the album cover. 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 which are fragile...broken through experience, but not entirely smashed. I am not a young artist in their early twenties. I am a mature woman facing up to 'core' issues. I don't want to represent myself visually in some kind of cliched, airbrushed, saccharine kind of way. I want to reveal myself as I am. For me this is a powerful and courageous statement. I have never been known to 'toe the safety line,' in terms of how I represent myself. As an artist, I need to be authentic...to take risks...to break the mould when necessary. The 'posture' of the image refers back to the earlier days of Eurythmics with the 'TOUCH' cover, only this time I have now turned to face the audience eye to eye, as it were. I am as 'BARE' as the title suggests, though not entirely exposed. The image is timeless, genderfree, and racially ambiguous. I could be a statue, a ghostly apparition, or an Indian saddhu. The false lashes represent the artifice of 'performance.' The colour has been drained from my mouth (where the words and sounds issue from) to saturate the title with redness (signifying lifeforce and anger). I hope it makes sense to you. Love, Annie."

OK… compare that to the following, printed on copies of the deluxe "producer's cut" edition of my cd MAGIC BEANS.

Here's something in the way of a sense toward a thumbnail encapsulation of the emotions and conceptualizations yours truly brought to bear regarding the artwork adorning this compact disc. On this collection I made songs about which I feel strongly. You might say I've used the medium of music to "reveal" many ways in which I've responded to the slings and arrows of life and its impact on precious parts of my secret garden of self, which is more resilient than one might expect and even welcomes the chance to "hang a moon" in this creative manner.
I am not some combo of performer in her teens no more. I'm a gentleman of a certain age, boldly assessing crucial issues. It would do me a disservice to offer an image of myself which did not eschew fol-de-rol, the hoity-toity and the humdrum. For that would be a flibbertigibbet of "nangnang!" proportions.
In my opinion, by facing such choices as bravely as I have, I've become an inspiring and heroic figure. Let's face it, I've never been one to accept notions of the "same old same old" for granted nor "be a good boy" in the eyes of those who would behold me as either or neither.
As a ceramics enthusiast, I have to "pour the slip" carefully into "the mould" before hitting the kiln. As a scuba diver and mother I feel the responsibility to not be other than me… to boldly go… the few, the proud… with nary a taint of bullshit. For this is the cloth of which such as me are cut. From.
The "rendering" of the "painting" on the "cover" is an allusion to the halcyon Skels era with the fondly and universally remembered "Be With That" cassette J card, 'cept now it's a cd and I'm a solo act and instead of a guy with a fez and a cigarette it's a fairytale kid with his tongue protruding, as if, so to speak, he was climbing up or down a beanstalk with his tongue "sticking out." The guy/kid is/are me, but now I am in an entirely different - and I'd say generous and guileless - frame of reference, to coin a phrase.
I am gently cupping, in a sense, my "MAGIC BEANS" in my hand, if you will. It feels really, really good. Mmmm. The picture is iconic, eternal, instructive, histamine-blocking and sexually irresistible. What am I? A ring-tailed lemur, a trio of slain civil rights activists, a can of DAK ham, a bout of colitis or some fist-jolly west village leatherboy? I am all of these and more: for after all, I am large; I contain multitudes. The sack I carry represents "Sacco and Vanzetti" The Vanzetto inside the bag represents 3 bucks a pound at today's market prices. That ain't hay. I'm a little pale and peaked, feeling an itching in my nose (which I use for breathing and for smelling things) representing a possible allergic reaction to the very legumes (beans… which are good for your heart; the more you eat the more you fart) that produced the stalk (to follow a celebrity or love-object in a threatening, harassing manner) to which I cling (peaches in syrup, reprezentin' strong island, yo). It would be really fucking cool if you dug where I'm coming from.
Peace, Sport

See what I'm saying? Whoo-ee!