The 1980s File Feature
Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves
Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves: Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin Write a Feminist AnthemImagine autumn 1985: the women's movement had been reshaping publi…
01 The Story
Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves: Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin Write a Feminist Anthem
Imagine autumn 1985: the women's movement had been reshaping public discourse for more than fifteen years, and popular music was finally producing explicit feminist anthems that matched the confidence and scale of what political activists had been saying for decades. Two of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music combined for a record that arrived with considerable force: the Eurythmics, the Anglo duo of Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, brought their synth-pop architecture and sharp political instincts to a collaboration with Aretha Franklin, the undisputed queen of soul, whose authority and vocal magnitude gave the project dimensions no purely pop act could have accessed alone.
Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart: Political Pop at Full Voltage
By 1985, the Eurythmics had moved through several phases of their identity: from the spare electronic experimentalism of their early records to the more expansive and emotionally direct sound of Touch and beyond. Lennox in particular had developed a stage and public persona of considerable power, her androgynous presentation and unflinching directness marking her out as one of the most genuinely distinctive figures in mainstream pop. Dave Stewart's production sensibility had proven capable of containing and amplifying that presence without diminishing it. When they conceived Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves, they understood they needed a collaborator whose own authority could stand alongside Lennox's without competition or compromise.
Aretha Franklin: The Necessary Voice
Few casting decisions in pop history have been as self-evidently correct as placing Aretha Franklin alongside Annie Lennox on this particular song. Franklin's career had been a living argument for Black female artistry and autonomy since the 1960s; her presence on a song celebrating female self-determination gave the track a historical depth that pure pop star power could not have provided. The two vocalists created a dialogue between their contrasting styles: Lennox's cool, controlled precision set against Franklin's gospel-rooted expressiveness, each bringing the other into sharper relief.
Fifteen Weeks to Number 18
The single debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on October 19, 1985, entering at number 62. Its climb was steady and sustained: 45, 39, 37, 31, the chart telling the story of a record that was building genuine radio momentum rather than burning briefly. The song peaked at number 18 on December 7, 1985, and spent 15 weeks on the Hot 100 in total. That sustained presence across autumn and into December made the song the soundtrack to an entire season for a large American audience.
Cultural Impact Beyond the Chart
The song's place in cultural memory has grown considerably beyond its chart positions. It became one of the defining feminist pop statements of the decade, appearing in film soundtracks, political contexts, and cultural retrospectives for years after its release. The combination of the Eurythmics' political urgency and Franklin's gospel authority produced something that operated simultaneously as a pop song and as a statement, two functions it performed without either cancelling the other. Press play and feel the full force of these two voices pulling in the same direction.
“Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves” — Eurythmics & Aretha Franklin's singular moment on the 1980s charts.
02 Song Meaning
Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves: The Politics of Self-Determination
The central claim of Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves is deceptively simple: women are capable of defining their own identities and achieving their own goals without the mediation or permission of men. In 1985, that claim still required stating with force, and the song states it with the combined authority of two of the most compelling voices in contemporary music. The directness of the message was the point; the era had produced enough subtle feminist pop that a song willing to be entirely explicit felt like a breath of fresh air.
The Tradition of Female Empowerment in Soul and R&B
Aretha Franklin's involvement in the project connected the song to a long lineage of Black female artists who had used their music to assert dignity, autonomy, and power. From the blues women of the 1920s through to the soul queens of the 1960s and beyond, Black American women had consistently used music as a space to say things that the broader culture refused to hear. Franklin was not simply a collaborator on this track; she was its historical warranty, the proof that the claim being made had been earned through generations of lived experience and artistic struggle.
Lennox and the Language of White Feminist Pop
Annie Lennox brought a different set of political energies to the project. Her version of feminism in the mid-1980s was inflected by the British political climate: Thatcherism, the nuclear disarmament movement, and a pop music scene in which gender politics were explicit subjects of debate. The Eurythmics had been playing with gender presentation and power since their earliest records; Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves channelled that consistent interest into its most direct expression. The collaboration between Lennox and Franklin was not merely additive but genuinely productive, each artist pushing the other toward something neither would have achieved alone.
The Chart Story as Cultural Barometer
A song this explicit in its political content reaching number 18 on the Hot 100 and sustaining 15 weeks on the chart through the autumn of 1985 tells you something important about where public culture was at that moment. The song did not have to hide its message behind metaphor or ambiguity; it stated its position plainly and found an enormous audience anyway. That audience was telling the music industry and the broader culture something worth paying attention to.
A Document of Its Moment and Beyond
The song belongs firmly to 1985 in its production values and its specific cultural context. It also belongs to every moment at which the question of female self-determination feels urgent, which is to say it has never stopped being relevant. The performance Lennox and Franklin give together, two enormously confident artists at the top of their powers, is itself an argument for the song's thesis: when women are allowed to do what they do best, the results are magnificent.
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