From my Valentines Day themed YouTube THE perfect song series. Chrissy Hyde is such a badass!
Back with the second love themed song for this month. I low-key hate Valentine’s Day but I love this perfect song about love. The Pretenders Message of Love was released forty five years ago this month. I was in ninth grade and was completely taken with The Pretenders; Chrissy Hynde and her dark shag, bangs in her face, heavy kohl eyeliner. She was punk but put-together-punk. Sexy in a different way than, like, Debbie Harry was. Pete Farndon, fucking gorgeous, with his dark hair swept up in a DA, the earring, the pink Fender bass. Yummy. Martin Chamber’s funky sideburns and James Honeyman-Scott’s really distinctive Rickenbacker riff work. They were New Wave, but not techno New Wave and not Rock-a-Billy New Wave. They sounded like no one else. Not Blondie or The Cars or Devo. Fresh and sassy!
The formation of The Pretenders in Hereford, England in the late 70s happened after Chrissy Hynde’s varied and interesting adventures after leaving Kent State University. Born in Akron, Ohio she was a student at Kent State at the same time as Jerry Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, and she was there during the May 1970 massacre. Hynde moved to London in 1973 and among other things she worked for the New Musical Express and at Vivienne Westwood and Malcom McLaren’s clothing store Sex. She was involved with members of both the Sex Pistols and The Clash before eventually meeting Farndon, Chambers and Honeyman- Scott.
Their alternative-punk cred is real, their first single was a cover of The Kink’s Stop Your Sobbing and was produced by Nick Lowe.
Message of Love was on their second album, Pretenders II. It starts with Chambers’ infectious swinging beat, then Honeyman -Scott and Farndon join in, and then Hynde joins in proclaiming the reason we’re here is to love each other, take care of each other. When love walks in the room, everybody stand up!
How can you not stand up and start swinging to that beat? And how can you not love a song that quotes Oscar Wild, “ We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Do yourself a favor this VD, spin some Pretenders and spread some love. It’s good, good, good. Message of Love is THE perfect song.
The SFB 
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