Her best songs show her to be a musical craftsman of the first order, and she is able to express a believable sexuality as explicitly as any male rock performer.įor the most part, both the explicit language and the experiments with odd time signatures and unlikely structural juxtapositions have been abandoned on ''Pretenders II.'' But if it is a more conservative album than its predecessor, it is also, musically speaking, a more substantial one. She is an attractive woman who can play rock and roll with the boys, but she is also something more. But Miss Hynde's songs and singing and her tough, rockand-roll-woman persona are what make the Pretenders really special, and she said as much in ''Precious,'' the definitive Pretenders song from the group's first album. The group has a distinctive sound, bass-heavy, with a deft layering of guitar parts that are often filtered through a watery tremolo effect and are subtle enough not to call attention to themselves. The first Pretenders single written by Miss Hynde, ''Kid,'' was a bigger hit, and their third single, ''Brass in Pocket,'' entered the British top five and the American top 10. It was a tune by Ray Davies of the Kinks. The group's first single, ''Stop Your Sobbing,'' was recorded in January 1979 and made its way into the British top 30.
#The pretenders pretenders ii songs series
During the next few years she played in rock bands in Paris, France and Cleveland, Ohio, and then, in 1976, she returned to London, where she put together a series of bands before coming up with the Pretenders and securing a recording contract. Chrissie Hynde arrived in England in 1974 and began writing about rock for New Musical Express. The group's guitarist, bassist and drummer - James Honeyman Scott, Pete Farndon, and Martin Chambers - played together for years in various local groups around Hereford, England, their hometown.
But before the end of 1978, they were working separately. Like most overnight succcesses, the Pretenders put in years of hard work before the public discovered them. And at a time when seasoned performers dominate rock as never before, the Pretenders, none of whom had enjoyed a previous recording career, have been an overnight success, with a string of hit singles and a debut album that went platinum in the United States and entered the British best seller charts at number one. Their guitarist, bassist and drummer are British, but their principal songwriter, lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist is an American woman, Ohio-born Chrissie Hynde. The Pretenders, whose second album, ''Pretenders II'' (Sire/Warner Brothers), was released this week, are unusual for at least two reasons.
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