Artist longevity is a topic of some relevance in the context of youth-oriented music. Where, for example, do the likes of Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney – octagenarians all – fit into the Venn diagram of original fans and much younger listeners? As for artists in their 70s who are still releasing new music and playing gigs – these include Bryan Ferry, Van Morrison, Debbie Harry, Neil Young, Robert Plant and Joni Mitchell – how do they renegotiate the relationship between what made them famous in the first place and what are now, despite their best efforts, diminishing commercial returns?
You can place Chrissie Hynde in that category, too. Now 72, the American songwriter and singer has, since 1978, steered the Pretenders from pop-chart highs in the late 1970s and most of the 1980s to what Hynde herself said (in 2005, when the Pretenders were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame) was a “tribute band for the past 20 years”. Fair enough, but that status changed with new blood entering the band’s veins in 2008, when the English guitarist James Walbourne (who had excelled in previous collaborations with Peter Bruntnell and the Pernice Brothers) was welcomed into the fold. Whatever Hynde had been missing before Walbourne came along was debatable, but since his arrival the Pretenders’ batteries have been recharged.
Relentless, the second Pretenders album that the pair have written all the tracks for (the first was 2020’s Hate for Sale), features a continuation of more bolstered songs that remain inextricably tethered to Hynde’s self-defining vocals. There are a few missteps towards the average – Losing My Sense of Taste is rock-pop ordinaire, while the likes of Merry Widow, Domestic Silence and Your House Is on Fire just don’t spark. Much better examples of Hynde’s reinvigoration include the robust guitar pop of Let the sun Come In (“We’re as free as the bikers were when they were thin”) and the forceful, riff-friendly Vainglorious. A particular high point is I Think About You Daily, a ballad garlanded with strings by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead and locked into reminiscence by Hynde’s lyrics (“I took my chances and I won, I gambled and stayed ahead. I never once looked back or had my fortune read... I could never take good advice, it was never my cup of tea”).
The lessons to be learned from ageing stars? For Chrissie Hynde, at least, the show ain’t over till it’s over.
