Not every song sung in the first person is about the songwriter herself, and women songwriters often get unfairly pegged as confessional. In contrast to how “Precious” (its counterpart from the first record) blasted out of the gate by name-checking the sights and sounds of Cleveland, making it one of the greatest opening salvos in rock, “The Adultress” replaces bravado with cynicism, boastfulness with world-weariness. The album’s lead-off track, “The Adultress”, serves as an introduction. And those weren’t the only songs that had a ring of familiarity. So, by the time Pretenders II came out five months later, two of its best songs were already known to the band’s devotees. In the UK, the four new tracks were released as singles (“Message of Love” and “Talk of the Town” were backed by “Porcelain” and “Cuban Slide”, respectively). She explains, “We released it in the US and called it Extended Play to let the Yanks know that it wasn’t an album, but it was a mistake: they thought we’d gone soft in the head by releasing our much-anticipated second album, Extended Play, with only a handful of songs on it.” Hynde felt their management had “jumped the gun” by releasing the new material. These tunes (plus two new ones and a live recording of “Precious”) were released as the aptly named Extended Play stopgap EP in March 1981. They had found time to record a few tracks, including “Message of Love” and “Talk of the Town”, at Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris. I thought writing on the road would have happened, but it never does.” As Chrissie Hynde writes in her 2015 memoir, Reckless: “Dave Hill was panicking, desperate to get a second record out, but I didn’t have the songs written yet. Their manager, Dave Hill, was eager to strike while the iron was hot and release a follow-up. It stands amongst the band’s best LPs, but it has the sad distinction of being the last recording made by the original lineup before the untimely deaths of lead guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Farndon in 19, respectively.īefore that-in 1981-the Pretenders were flying high from their debut’s success and were playing ever-larger venues on tour. It features the band’s signature blend of rock swagger and pop tenderness and contains one of the finest pieces frontwoman Chrissie Hynde ever wrote. Still, the album is full of energy and verve. The Pretenders avoided the sophomore curse with Pretenders II (which is aptly named since it is nearly a song-for-song copy of their eponymous introductory collection). After that-and if they’re lucky-the artist will get a chance to rebound with the third LP, and the sophomore effort will subsequently be relegated to the cut-out bins. This second album, often written on a tour bus instead of a bedsit (and sounding like it), habitually falls short. Invariably, the record they rush to release pales in comparison to the debut that made them famous. Ah, the sophomore slump, which can happen when an artist who spent their whole life writing their first album has only a few months to write the next.
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