“Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by Eurythmics

"Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" was the title track and the fourth single from Eurythmics' second album, put out by RCA in January 1983, and it was the record that finally broke Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart wide open. It was also the first Eurythmics single to come out in America.

They made it at home, more or less: a small project studio squeezed into the attic of an old North London warehouse where the pair were living, with Stewart producing and engineering alongside Robert Crash and Adam Williams. The synths pulse cold and relentless, the rhythm clanks like machinery in a locked room, and Lennox sings over the top in a voice that's commanding and utterly unbothered. Its success helped convince other musicians they could walk out of the big studios and record at home.

For Chris Ashbrook's video, Lennox cropped her hair, dyed it orange and put on a man's business suit, and the BBC reckoned that androgynous look broke the mould for women in pop. The song went to number two in Britain and all the way to the top of the Hot 100 in America. The Grammy Hall of Fame inducted it in 2020, the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in 2023, and Eurythmics have played it at every show they've done since.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.