Pretenders (1980)

Pretenders is the debut studio album by British-American band the Pretenders, released on 11 January 1980. A combination of rock and roll, punk and new wave music, it was an immediate success. The album features the singles "Stop Your Sobbing" (a cover of the 1964 Kinks deep cut), "Kid" and "Brass in Pocket". The track "Private Life" would be covered later that same year by Jamaican singer Grace Jones for her fourth studio album Warm Leatherette and was released as a single that June, reaching number 17 on the UK singles chart.

Nick Lowe produced the Pretenders' first single, "Stop Your Sobbing", but decided not to work with them again as he thought the band was "not going anywhere". Chris Thomas took over on the subsequent recording sessions.

Release

Pretenders debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart in the week of its release and stayed there for four consecutive weeks. It also made the top 10 on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum during 1982 by the RIAA.

Pretenders was remastered and re-released in 2006 and included a bonus disc of demos, B-sides and live cuts, many previously unreleased. "Cuban Slide" and "Porcelain" originally appeared as B-sides to "Talk of the Town" and "Message of Love", while "Swinging London" and "Nervous But Shy" both appeared on the flip side of "Brass in Pocket". The Regents Park demo of "Stop Your Sobbing" was included initially as a flexi-single in the May 1981 edition of Flexipop magazine. The tracks "Message of Love", "Talk of the Town", "Porcelain" and "Cuban Slide" alongside a live version of the album's opening track, "Precious", were released on a follow-up EP entitled Extended Play soon after.

Pretenders was also reissued in 2009 by Audio Fidelity as a limited-edition audiophile gold CD, using the original master tapes. However, this remaster suffered from unauthorized, heavy limiting supposedly applied after engineer Steve Hoffman's digital master was created and approved for CD manufacturing. The song "The Phone Call" is missing some of the telephone effects on this release because the effects were "flown in" after the master was completed for the song and, as a result, were not on the original master tape. There were no bonus tracks included.

A shortened version of "Tequila" would be performed nearly 15 years later on the Last of the Independents. "Sabre Dance" features Chrissie Hynde singing portions of "Stop Your Sobbing" over solos by James Honeyman-Scott.

A cover version of "Brass in Pocket" and the master version of "Precious" were released as downloadable content for Rock Band.

A cover version of “Tattooed Love Boys” was featured as a playable track in the rhythm video game Guitar Hero II.

Another deluxe edition of the album, curated by Hynde, was released on 5 November 2021 and features the original album remastered by Chris Thomas, alongside demos, rarities, and many live performances. These include BBC sessions on The Kid Jensen Show, and performances at The Paris Theatre in London and Paradise Theater in Boston.

Critical reception

Contemporary reviews for the album were mixed. In Melody Maker, Chris Brazier called the record "the first important album" of the 1980s, and while the second side of the album was better than the first side, overall "the album is irresistible". However, Tony Stewart of NME criticised Melody Maker for hyping the band, and said that "so much about the Pretenders is reminiscent of '60s pop games that any claim they are innovative is completely invalid". Stewart noted influences from the Velvet Underground, the Beatles, the 1960s beat boom, Blondie and the Police, and while he acknowledged Hynde's talents as a frontwoman, he dismissed the band's playing and inability to lift the music to the level of the lyrics, stating that "they seem unable to give it an edge".

Sounds's Robbi Millar said of the album, "Its success, which should be fairly apparent through the next few months, will be valued not through hype and wildly enthusiastic pen-happy journalists but through a number of strong album tracks." Millar also noted several influences, including Sting and Public Image Ltd, and that the album included three singles and two B-sides that had already been released, but that it also included "seven other worthy tracks" which resulted in "one fine first album".

In 1989, Rolling Stone ranked Pretenders the 20th best album of the 1980s. In 2012, Slant Magazine listed Pretenders at number 64 on its list of the best albums of the 1980s.

Pretenders has been named one of the best albums of all time by VH1 (No. 52). In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 155 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, with Pretenders maintaining the rating in the 2012 revised list, and moving up to number 152 on the 2020 revision. In 2020, Rolling Stone included the band's debut album in their "80 Greatest albums of 1980" list.