Revisiting Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders
It was the summer of 1984. I was playing pinball with a pal at Tiffany’s, a crowded pub on Ford Parkway in St. Paul favored by students from two nearby Catholic colleges, St. Catherines and St. Thomas. As an interloper from protestant (agnostic, really) Macalester College, I was on foreign territory, but Tiffany’s had our favorite pinball machine, so we occasionally ended up there.
As we played, from across the noisy barroom I heard a new song playing on the jukebox. I couldn’t hear it clearly through clamor, but what I could make out riveted my attention. It’s happened to me only a few times: I hear a pop song for the first time and know instantly that it will be a monster hit. I had that flash of recognition, for example, the first time I hear Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love,” The Kinks’ “Come Dancing,” and Lorde’s “Royals.” And it happened that night: George Harrison had, I was sure, just released his best-ever post-Beatles single.
A few days later I would learn the title of the song: “Back on the Chain Gang.” Of course it wasn’t by George Harrison, as I mistook it through the noisy din of the bar that night, but rather The Pretenders. And it did go on to become an enormous hit, just as I had intuited. I only recently learned that George Harrison too heard something of himself in the record: in a 1992 interview, he said it was the only other song he know that used a special chord, an E7th with an F on top, that he had invented for the Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).”
Then it was the summer of 2024. I started thinking about that song again because on August 23 I had the chance to see Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders play a sold-out concert here in Chicago. In the days before and since, I’ve been going back over Hynde’s remarkable catalog of recordings. I’ve always liked her music—I think I first became aware of her through her brilliant Kinks’ covers back at the start of her career. But over the past month I’ve developed a much more intense respect for her as a composer and performer. And I’ve become convinced that she’s never gotten her full due.
The concert was excellent (set list available here). Hynde remains in excellent voice and isn’t afraid to lead with her strong new material, including the evening’s opening number, “Losing My Sense of Smell.” It’s a brooding meditation that pulls together worries about aging, Covid, and the difficulties not just in keeping up with the latest, but in sustaining the desire to keep up. As always, throughout the concert she remained true to the spirit of punk, more than once cursing members of the audience for daring to record her on their cell phones and going out of her way to complement another for wearing a Morrissey t-shirt. She had us eating out of the palm of her hand all evening.
“Losing My Sense of Smell” (Official Audio)
The show was held at the Chicago Theater, a 3600-seat old vaudeville-and-movie palace. After being rescheduled due to an illness in the band, it turned out to be the final stop on the band’s American tour. Hynde has commented repeatedly on social media about how she thinks her music works better in smaller venues like that. She’s worked out a remarkably savvy strategy for touring in this age in which the economics of music-making are more precarious than ever. Two summers in a row, she’s booked a series of shows as opener for a gigantic stadium tour band (the Foo Fighters this year), which apparently brings in enough cash to subsidize a string of solo dates at smaller venues she schedules for the off dates on the mega-tour. In 2023, this involved playing some last-minute shows at tiny punk clubs like the 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis (link to review). This year, it involved shows aimed at her more hardcore fans at mid-size venues like the Chicago Theater. It’s a remarkably smart business strategy that allows her to pay the bills and retain artistic control over when and where she wants the band to play. This also frees her up to play a set list of something beyond just the hits. And when you’ve got a back catalog like she does, there is a broad range of material to cover, stretching back almost half a century.
Listening to her catalog (twelve studio albums, plus numerous compilations, but surprisingly few official live recordings), I’ve been struck by the consistent excellence of her work as both a composer and performer. She has the knack of the very best rock songwriters to be able to range across genres (a rockabilly shuffle here, a power ballad there; a Clash-style punk tune on this side, some jingle-jangle new wave way on that side) while always retaining an indelible personal style: you always know it’s a Pretenders’ song within a few seconds (at least, that is, when you’re not hearing it through the distortion of a boisterous crowded barroom). Part of this lies in the emotional complexity of Hynde’s lyrics: even her most joyful songs have a darker undertone, while her most melancholic pieces also deploy a lightly ironic wit. Part of it is her knack for coming up with extraordinarily catchy melodies combined with irresistible lyric phrases.
But what I think really sets her apart from her peers is her genius for coming up with hooks, those little bits and phrases that are so crucial to a great pop song. Think of the drum flourish that opens “Middle of the Road.” Or again, on “Back on the Chain Gang,” Chrissie’s “oh-oh-oh” stuck in at the end of the opening line of each verse or the “ooh-ahh-ooh-ahh” grunting in the background of the chorus. Or yet again, the opening guitar lick and the middle-eight (“who can explain the thunder and rain, but there’s something in the air) on “Kid,” the off-kilter rhythm of the guitars and drums on “Tattooed Love Boys,” the Clash-like bass line on “Mystery Achievement,” etc., etc. On top of the solid bones of her lyrics, chord structures, and melodies, Chrissie Hynde and bandmates always add on those little bells and whistles that take a pop song from good to great. And she’s been doing it consistently for almost fifty years.
Chrissie Hynde turned seventy-three earlier this month and the band have just launched a European tour. “We don’t have to get fat, we don’t have to get old,” she sings on the 2023 track “Let The Sun Come In,” concluding “To live forever, that’s the plan.” If anyone can pull that off, it’s her. For us mere mortals, let’s make sure we appreciate her while we can.
