Annie Lennox sings Cole Porter!

Actually, Annie Lennox wasn’t the only rock star singing Cole Porter in 1990. She was one of 20 artists to appear on the compilation album, Red Hot + Blue. The album was the first to be put together by the Red Hot Organization and the money made from it was donated to the battle against AIDS.

Cole Porter originally wrote the song in 1944. The song, which quickly became a jazz standard, is sung from the point of view of someone who is happy when they are with their lover but who, at the same time, is heartbroken when they’re separated. Lennox used her cover of the song to pay tribute to the filmmaker Derek Jarman, who would die of AIDS-related illness in 1994. In fact, Jarman was originally meant to direct the video but, when he became too ill, he was replaced by Ed Lachman. The home movies that appear in the video are of Jarman as a child.