Lennox recalled the writing of what may still be her best-known song, Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” She had just had a bitter fight with Stewart, who remained her musical collaborator after their romance ended in 1980. “I thought it was the end of the road,” she said. “I was miserable. And he just went, well, ‘I’ll do this anyway.’

Stewart came up with a beat, Lennox doodled the octave-hopping synthesizer riff, and suddenly they had something.

Between Lennox’s first two solo albums she avoided touring, raising the two daughters she had with the filmmaker Uri Fruchtmann, her husband from 1988 to 2000. She and Stewart reunited to tour together and make a Eurythmics album, Peace, in 1999.

Lennox’s 2003 album, Bare, recorded in the wake of her divorce, pondered betrayal and separation in sumptuously orchestrated ballads. Songs of Mass Destruction is more varied and often more muscular. Ghosts in My Machine confronts inner demons over a driving Louisiana accordion riff: “I hurt too much/I feel too much/I dread too much/I dream too much.”

From Dark Road, the album moves through obsession, loneliness, self-doubt, rage, determination and the despairing resignation of Lost: a waltz, nearly a lullaby, that envisions bombs and torture before holding a glimmer of hope.

One of the album’s tracks, Sing, is devoted to a cause: the treatment of pregnant women with AIDS. Lennox gathered two dozen women, including Madonna, Shakira, Bonnie Raitt, Celine Dion, Fergie, Gladys Knight and KT Tunstall.

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