It’s Friday and thus music time, and here’s one of my favorite songs from the Eighties: “Don’t Get Me Wrong” with the Pretenders. Wikipedia tells us that it’s the only original Pretenders song—something new to me—and adds this surprising fact:
Frontwoman Chrissie Hynde said she was inspired to write the song for her friend John McEnroe.
McEnroe apparently played something on one of her albums. At any rate, the song is from 1986 and rose to only #10 on the American charts. With its driving beat, great bridge, and lovely vocals (Hynde’s pronunciation of “Fantastic” at the end always gets me), it deserved more than that. Here’s a live performance, or so I think (it’s very close to the recorded version); the notes say it was on Top Of The Pops on 23rd October, 1986:
Hynde also wrote ‘Back on the Chain Gang’, but it was recorded with several stand-in musicians after James Honeyman-Scott, the Pretenders guitarist, died of a drug overdose and the bassist was fired for his drug use. So I guess technically not totally a Pretenders song. In my opinion, that is their best song.
I like “Don’t Get Me Wrong” better, but “Chain Gang” is a good song.
I really like this song. I have various iTunes playlists, mainly for long drives, and it is definitely on more than one of them.
Another one that somehow lands in a similar way to me is Different Drum, best known in the version performed by Linda Ronstadt. I really like the harpsichord and strings.
Not certain what Wikipedia means by “only original Pretenders song”. Hynde wrote all of their big hits. They were a band of the last of my undergrad years and the first years after, along with the Talking Heads. Good music and memories.
Yeah, that puzzled me, too. It can’t possibly be true.
Slight correction: Wikipedia states that, “Billboard wrote that although Hynde is the only original Pretender remaining, this song represents “a pretty upbeat, strutting, confident Pretenders”. Not that the song is the only original Pretenders song, but that she’s the last of the band.
I was an undergrad when their first album came out, and a buddy of mine from Cleveland played it non-stop. One of the great voices in rock and roll in my opinion.