One of my favorite cover songs of all time is Annie Lennox doing The Blue Nile’s “Downtown Lights.” Lennox’s sumptuous take on her fellow Scots’ tune was included on 1995’s all-covers Medusa, her second solo effort. Introduced to the trio via “Downtown Lights,” I soon sought out The Blue Nile‘s releases and summarily fell in love with the epicness of their music, each song playing out like a mini movie.

Sixteen years later, another UK artist has followed Lennox’s lead, issuing an all-covers sophomore set and including a song by The Blue Nile. Andrea Corr, lead vocalist for Irish folk-rock siblings The Corrs, released Lifelines in May. The album features her take on “Tinseltown In The Rain,” from The Blue Nile’s 1984 debut, A Walk Across The Rooftops, which Andrea says she used to listen to a lot while on the road with her siblings.

“The key to [‘Tinseltown In The Rain’], or to me, the line in that song, is, ‘Here we are, caught up in this big rhythm,'” Corr explains. “It makes you more aware of the moment. Like, we are small, and it’s all beyond our control and everything, which makes us lose it. In a good way.”

Corr’s cover of “Tinseltown In The Rain” makes me lose it, in a good way. Bringing the song’s melody forward, you can tell she loves these lyrics, believes these words. I particularly like the backing vocal bit and the punctuating string plucks — a hat-tip to Lennox’s own “Here Comes The Rain Again”? — though I do miss The Blue Nile’s quasi-disco breakdown from the original.

Writing this post, I realized I’d never featured Annie Lennox’s cover of “Downtown Lights.” Such a shameful, inexcusable oversight! Also it was only yesterday while doing some research that I discovered that The Blue Nile had collaborated with Lennox on her debut solo album, 1992’s Diva, and had co-written the closing track, “The Gift.”.

Now a duo, The Blue Nile records only sporadically, counting just four albums over their 30-year career. Their most recent release is 2004’s High. A biography of the band, Nileism: The Blue Nile Story, was published earlier this year.

Purchase Andrea Corr – “Tinseltown In The Rain” (The Blue Nile cover) via iTunes.