Video: Watch Annie Lennox sing ‘I Put a Spell On You’

What is “Nostalgia”?

Singer and songwriter Annie Lennox puts that question forward boldly in the title of her new album of pop standards. due Oct. 21, the album is a collection of her deeply personalized versions of songs mostly from the Great America Songbook such as George and Ira Gershwin’s “Summertime,” Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell’s “Georgia on My Mind” and Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr.’s “God Bless the Child.”

Lennox told Pop & Hiss this week that her notion of nostalgia runs deeper than the casual connotation of sentimental reflection commonly associated with the word, and that’s reflected in her approach to selecting, arranging and singing songs mostly from the 1930s.

“It’s a yearning, a longing for something,” she said — a feeling that surfaces in some form in virtually all the songs on “Nostalgia.”

It wasn’t, she noted, any sense of personal nostalgia that prompted her to record standards because for the most part, the Scottish musician had not been immersed during her youth in the trove of songs that originated during the Great Depression.

It was more a mission of musical exploration into a body of work she wanted to know more about after working up a version of Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Goodbye,” with jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock several years ago for a UN AIDS relief benefit concert.

She’ll be discussing the album and performing five songs tonight, Oct. 16, at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles. (Calendar will have a full story on Lennox in the days ahead.)

In conjunction with the impending release of “Nostalgia,” Lennox, a crew of musicians and a video production team holed up in a warehouse in South Central Los Angeles to shoot atmospheric videos for nine of the album’s 12 songs.

Rather than lip-syncing to the recorded versions, Lennox sang live vocals for all but one of the videos.

They’ll be posted on Vevo and YouTube over the next couple of weeks. Here’s the video for the one song from the album that originated outside the Great American Songbook canon: R&B singer Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ haunting 1956 homage to unrequited love, “I Put a Spell On You.”

Follow @RandyLewis2 on Twitter for pop music coverage