pretenders – Words & Music

It was about five years ago that I became less involved with the mechanism of life when four of the most important people in mine became more distant, less intimate. It wasn’t all bad. My dearest dreams for two of them came true: he fell in love and became an independent man. She fell in love and became a mommy. But I miss the places all of them held in my life.

For the next couple of weeks I have to get used to the downside of being alone, to a life with nobody waving to me from the window, with no counterweight in conversation, with no aromas of vegetarian masterpieces wafting down the hall to greet me as I step off the elevator. And that litterbox isn’t going to clean itself.

But there are good things too. Nobody tells me I can’t. Nobody tells me I shan’t. No one to say “you’re doing it wrong.”

What am I gonna to do today?

Walk to the newsstand, checkout the war zone
Check the listings, see what’s good on
Oh, there’s one I’ve been wanting to see
Anyone here up for a movie? I am

Nobody tells me I can’t
Nobody tells me I shan’t
No one to say “You’re doing it wrong”
I’m at my best, I’m where I belong
Alone
Yeah, I like it

Now I’m down on the street
Hanging out with the poets and the Greeks and the deadbeats
I’m taking my time, sitting on park benches
All the glamour is right down here
This is where the trends begin
Life’s a canvas and I’m on it

Nobody tells me I can’t
Nobody tells me I shan’t
No one to say “You’re doing it wrong”
I’m at my best, I’m where I belong
Alone
I like it, yeah
I like being alone

And the other thing I like to do
Go to the graveyard and hang out with you
And sit back and have a smoke and practice my autograph
And re-read your epitaph and it says:
“Don’t you laugh as you walk by
For as you are so once was I
And as I am so you shall be
Prepare for death and follow mje”

Alone
I like it

Nobody tells me I can’t
Nobody tells me I shan’t
No one to say “You’re doing it wrong”
I’m at my best, I’m where I belong
Alone
Yeah, I like it

What are you going to do about it, huh?

Absolutely nothing

I’m going to do whatever I well please

Chrissie Hynde has recorded ten albums with The Pretenders and one solo. Her recordings from the current decade are as intelligent, driven, passionate, and unpretentious as any of her work since the seventies.

Born in Ohio, Hynde moved to London in 1973 and worked as a music critic for NME. Legend has it that someone told her if she thought it was so easy to make music she should do it herself. So she did.

Nick Lowe produced the first Pretenders’ single, a cover of The Kink’s Stop Your Sobbing, in 1979 and within a year Hynde had taken her band to #1 in the UK charts (and #14 in the US) with her original song Brass In Pocket.

The Pretenders had some of the most tumultuous upheavals of any rock band. On June 14, 1982, as the band was peaking in popularity, the other members fired bassist Pete Farndon due to his heroin use. Two days later the guitarist James Honeyman-Scott died of a cocaine overdose. The next year Farndon took heroin, passed out in his bathtub, and drowned.

In the last 18 years, with and without The Pretenders, Chrissie Hynde has released five collections of some of the best writing, singing, and producing of her career. Her solo album Stockholm opens with Phil Spectorish drums and strings on the song You or No One.

This lonely heart’s been yearning
The skies above’ve been turning
Feels like the universe just grew

I’ve waited for so long

I just wanna be with you always
I wanna be around you always
I just wanna be with you or no one
Making it you or no one

And when the night starts falling
Even the stars are calling
Spinning and spelling out your name

Now that’s what I call fame
Spelling out your name
Forever and ever

Love is a hurting thing
It doesn’t go away
Forever is a long time
To wait for you to say

I just wanna be with you always
I wanna be around you always
I just wanna be with you or no one
Making it you or no one

Please stay

Never go away.
Please stay

Never go, never go away

Tag: pretenders

Alone

Genius in Our Midst: Hynde