Annie Lennox On Recruiting Taylor Swift, Sting And More For Charity Auction To

Annie Lennox might be an Oscar and Grammy-winning music icon, but the celebrated singer is human just like all of us. And she admits at times she does get overwhelmed by all the negativity in the world.

” I actually despair sometimes, though I try not to, cause we would love to find global solutions that were effective against these terrible, festering problems that could so well be resolved with good initiatives,” she tells me. “There are resolutions and positive things that could be done quite easily to change.”

She is particularly outraged by what she calls “the invisible war against women.” As I speak to Lennox and Raakhi Shah, the CEO of Lennox’s Circle organization, founded by Lennox in 2008 to help women around the globe, the statistics they read off are horrifying.

According to Shah, the United Nations projects that for every three months of lockdown during the pandemic there will be 15 million additional cases of domestic violence. That is not total during the lockdown, that is every three months. And to back up their claim they point out that in one day the biggest refuge in the U.K. had a 700 percent increase in calls. That is one day.  

However, Lennox has the ability to contribute and use the global good will she has earned in the music community to rally some friends together to raise money and help women during these trying times.

To that end, she and Shah have put together an incredible auction featuring private, personalized video performances from Lennox, Sting, Hozier and more, as well as an autographed guitar from Taylor Swift. And what is really cool is that the fundraiser, held on Charity Stars, features both an auction and sweepstakes so everyone has a chance to win one of these once-in-a-lifetime performances.

For example, if you can’t afford the thousands of dollars it would take to win the personalized performances from Lennox or Sting you can buy a sweepstakes ticket for $10 and all the proceeds go to The Circle and helping women around the globe. The auction ends this Friday (July 10) and the sweepstakes ends July 31.

I spoke at length with Lennox and Shah recently over an impassioned and inspiring hour-long Zoom call about The Circle, how seeing the Amnesty tours, featuring Sting, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman and more, inspired Lennox during her Eurythmics days, Swift’s courage in becoming an activist in 2020 and most importantly what can be done to help women around the globe.

Steve Baltin: What was the impetus for the auction.

Annie Lennox: When you’re talking about women and girls in the developing world, they’re already on…