ANNIE LENNOX is a worrier. She worries about African children with AIDS, the poor and the homeless. She worries about the state of popular music, about every detail of her album packages and Web site, about her stamina as she gears up for an American tour, following the release of her fourth solo album, Songs of Mass Destruction, last week. One thing she doesn’t have to worry about is whether her songs move people.

It happened while she was rehearsing with her band, in the dreary Bermondsey neighbourhood of London. In her do-gooder mode, Lennox was about to headline a sold-out benefit concert at the Royal Albert Hall for Peace One Day. She was rehearsing her new single, the hymnlike ballad Dark Road.

Midway through There Must Be an Angel (Playing With My Heart), which may well be an elegy masquerading as a love song, one of her backup singers suddenly heard the words anew and burst into tears.

Lennox, 52, has made a career of music that works at cross-purposes. In Eurythmics, her duo with Dave Stewart, Lennox’s husky soul singing was the sensual, human element in grids of synthetic sound. And on her solo albums, beginning with Diva in 1992, she has created elegant settings for ever more desolate thoughts.

Lennox has made just four solo albums in 15 years. For Lennox, writing is an essentially private experience, starting in a room with a piano. “You don’t know what you’re writing about,” she said. “You’re just working on the hunch that maybe some idea might fly into your head or come out of your mouth.”

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