The Miracle Of Love

Album: Revenge (1986)
Charted: 23
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Many Eurythmics songs - "Love Is A Stranger" comes to mind - deal with the cutting edge of love, but this one celebrates its joy and healing powers. Released as a single from their fifth album, Revenge, it wasn't a huge hit but showed lots of staying power, becoming one of Eurythmics' most popular songs in the streaming era.
  • As usual, this song was a collaboration between the two members of Eurythmics, Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox. Stewart's musical brain never really shuts down, and one day he was in his kitchen at his home in London when he came up with the riff on acoustic guitar (the kitchen had a stone floor and he liked the reverb). He wrote the chords and the line "The miracle of love will take away your pain."

    The next time he got together with Lennox, he played it for her and right away she came up with the melody and verse lyric. They had Michael Kamen arrange strings for the song and came up with a soaring instrumental section for the middle. Lennox capped it by ad-libbing some vocals at the end.
  • Stewart credits Lennox' vocal for giving the song its emotional punch. "Not only does Annie have a very distinctive sound to her voice, she has another element which is soaked in emotion and can literally move people to tears," he wrote in The Dave Stewart Songbook. "It's a mixture of the sound she makes with her voice and the fact that she come from Aberdeen, Scotland, where the musical heritage is littered with haunting airs. It is hard to explain how such sadness and beauty can come from the melodies and chord changes in Scottish or Irish airs, you just have to listen to them and feel it."
  • Dave Stewart directed the video along with Billy Poveda, shooting it on an 8mm camera to give it a gritty look. As Lennox sings, we see war footage cut in, providing a stark contrast between the words and images. Every time Lennox sings the line "the miracle of love," we see an atomic bomb explosion, which Stewart calls "the ultimate juxtaposition."
  • Annie Lennox is very shy but an excellent actress, as she proved in so many Eurythmics videos. "The Miracle Of Love" includes a rare candid shot of her that Dave Stewart captured with a long lens when she didn't know she was being filmed. This shot, where she lets out a little laugh, appears at the end of the clip.
  • Eurythmics often played this song as the closing number at their concerts, sending the fans home with a very emotional performance. "People were always crying," Dave Stewart told Songfacts.

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Edie Brickell

Edie BrickellSongwriter Interviews

Edie Brickell on her collaborations with Paul Simon, Steve Martin and Willie Nelson, and her 2021 album with the New Bohemians.

Rick Springfield

Rick SpringfieldSongwriter Interviews

Rick has a surprising dark side, a strong feminine side and, in a certain TV show, a naked backside. But he still hasn't found Jessie's Girl.

Pam Tillis

Pam TillisSongwriter Interviews

The country sweetheart opines about the demands of touring and talks about writing songs with her famous father.

90s Music Quiz 1

90s Music Quiz 1Music Quiz

First question: Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson appeared in videos for what artist?

Colin Hay

Colin HaySongwriter Interviews

Established as a redoubtable singer-songwriter, the Men At Work frontman explains how religion, sobriety and Jack Nicholson play into his songwriting.

They Might Be Giants

They Might Be GiantsSongwriter Interviews

Who writes a song about a name they found in a phone book? That's just one of the everyday things these guys find to sing about. Anything in their field of vision or general scope of knowledge is fair game. If you cross paths with them, so are you.