EXCLUSIVE: Annie Lennox: Nostalgia Preview

Annie Lennox held a private listening event at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, Calif. last month to celebrate the release of her upcoming seventh solo album Nostalgia - a 12-track collection of fresh and hauntingly beautiful takes on standards primarily from the 1930s and 1940s.

"This is an extraordinary place and it is filled with nostalgia," she told the audience during a Q&A with Anthony DeCurtis that night after they'd heard several of the tracks from the album for the first time. "It's a sense of impermanence for me and how music is a sort of lasting energy, sound, and the emotion that is contained within these songs."

Nostalgia, which will be released on vinyl September 30 with digital and CD editions following on October 21, features the legendary singer/songwriter's impassioned takes on iconic American classics such as "Memphis In June," "Georgia On My Mind," "I Put A Spell On You," and "Summertime."

"The human experience, the things that we all go through, the things we endure, our pain our longing our loneliness, they're all in these beautiful songs," she said, noting that the album presented an interesting challenge that piqued her interest. "I think for me the challenge was to bring the life into [these songs], to take it back, to kind of own it."

In addition to the personal challenge the songs presented to her, Lennox revealed the inspiration for her latest collection came from her ongoing evolution as an artist. "I think your values change and shift," she said of the song choices for Nostalgia. "I'm a woman and I'm getting older but I want to still make music."

"I don't want to twerk, but I want to be relevant," she joked.

Watch highlights from the event and get a preview of Nostalgia in the video below as Lennox takes fans behind the scenes of her creative process for her latest album.

"Right here and now is when I felt it's time," she said. "I want to put my voice down. I want to record it. I want to leave if for posterity. Because after all, I'm a recording artist, I'm a singer. I love to sing. I love to perform and I love to record most of all. I love to record in the studio. That is something that gives me great joy."