Nostalgia is Annie Lennox' seventh solo album. It is a collection of the iconic singer's impassioned takes on standards primarily from the 1930s and 1940s, many of them popularized by the likes of Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Jo Stafford and Louis Armstrong.
Nostalgia is the result of hours Lennox spent perusing vintage recordings and video performances of songs from the Great American Songbook, particularly those rooted in the blues. “I was just curious,” says the songwriter and singer of ‘Summertime’, ‘I Put a Spell On You’ and ‘Strange Fruit’ and other, less-widely known songs such ‘Mood Indigo’ and ‘September in the Rain’, “I thought, ‘I wonder what my voice would be like. Would these songs suit my voice?’ It was like a little challenge. I just sort of got to know them, became friends with them really and had a great deal of joy in the process."
The music on the album was mostly played by Annie alongside her long-time collaborator and co-producer, Mike Stevens and was recorded in his West London studio. Finding Lennox at her most soulful, Nostalgia brings levels of depth and warmth to songs that primarily originated from the civil-rights era.