Annie Lennox opens up about writing the theme song to A Private War.
The singer was tapped to write the theme song to Matthew Heineman’s new feature about British journalist Marie Colvin, who was killed in 2012 while covering the war in Syria.
The choice was natural on both sides as the singer-songwriter had actually met the Sunday Times journalist before her death.
CAA’s Brian Loucks said “I thought this was the kind of movie Annie would love,” but the Oscar-winning singer wasn’t sure she’ll be able to deliver.
“When the call came through to ask me if I would write a song, I said: ‘I’d like to try,’” Lennox said. “Because I hadn’t written a song in years, and I didn’t even know if I could write a song.”
“The first line came to me and the rest quickly flowed,” Lennox told Variety. “I wrote it over a couple of hours and thought: Wow, I must have been meant to write this. It felt so strange like it was meant to be. I was so touched by Marie’s death and in those circumstances, you feel so helpless. But writing a song a few years later felt so appropriate to me. I wanted to honor her memory.”
The ballad was co-produced by the film’s composer, H. Scott Salinas. It’s titled “A Requiem for a Private War.”
“It truly is a requiem that you sing in honor and in commemoration of death so that we don’t forget — and Marie wrote those stories so that we don’t forget. It’s carrying on that legacy of remembrance,” Lennox said. “There was some magic that happened in our collaboration together,” Salinas added.
Lennox previously penned the original song “Into the West” for Lord of the Rings and “Love Song for a Vampire” for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. hadn’t lost her touch.
