Annie Lennox, Why: beyond the meaning of the lyrics

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A woman in a salon, with wet lips, tasting like wine. A woman in a taxi after work, who returns home and opens the doors to her feelings only at the end of the day. And a woman who lives with her children, who would deprive herself of anything to give them more.

A seductive woman, charming, beautiful and strong, who closed her emotion in a drawer, trusting no one. A woman who knows life, who has fought, who has made herself strong and who has loved.

Why, Annie Lennox’s most famous song, is all these things.

I tell myself too many times
Why don’t you ever learn to keep your big mouth shut
That’s why it hurts so bad to hear the words
That keep on falling from your mouth

Sometimes you build a character, a mask, to defend yourself in the toughest seasons of life, when everytjing around you is cold.

Some other times, on the other hand, you are really like that: a box that opens up only for few special ones. Like machines capable of moving forward like tanks and then stopping at some point, coming to terms with themselves, unleashing the best part of themselves at the end of the day, in an intimate confidence.
 
This is exactly the idea that Annie Lennox gives in this song.

Annie Lennox - Why (Official Music Video)

A bewildering, self-confident beauty, she lets herself go to an imaginary dialogue about the weaknesses of her relationship. Things that act on her like bullets.

Annie is a strong woman, one of those women who pulls forward, able to carry her relationship on her shoulders. A woman that can face problems, and can act in behalf of both.

Let’s go down to the water’s edge
And we can cast away those doubts
Some things are better left unsaid
But they still turn me inside out

Annie is the woman she chose to be. A woman who makes mistakes and can apologize, who knows how to ask questions without being afraid of the answers.

Annie is a woman who can start a war, but only to make peace. And she wants to know Why.

Because she feels like in a vortex of misunderstandings. She feels unnoticed, and the relationship arrived to a point where it just seems a challenge, when who wins is who is able to resist most.

It often happens that, in order to find the right solution, you make efforts that can be misunderstood, and there it’s like you never knew each other. And the one who should understand you reacts to your words like he’s dealing with someone else.

Without understanding the meanings and the reasons of what you do.

This is Why. It’s a strong woman who loves. Nothing more complicated, nothing stronger. A question, with a thousand answers.

Why
Why
I may be mad
I may be blind
I may be viciously unkind
But I can still read what you’re thinking
And I’ve heard it said too many times

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