If I'm looking kind of dazzled, I see neon lights

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

09/11/86 : Get Close - The Pretenders

This is a nice blast from the past - I haven't exactly forgotten The Pretenders because Chrissie Hynde still pops up from time to time, but I can't say I hear their tracks very often except for "2000 Miles" around Christmas time. I'm pretty certain I never owned this one, but I think I must have borrowed it at some point because I'm sure I've listened to it quite a few times - I'm looking forward to being reminded of it.

Yeah, this is a decent album - it has general Pretendersesque sound to it but there's also a fair amount of variety across the tracks. It's also one of those albums that definitely had the best tracks released as singles, with "Don't Get Me Wrong" and "Hymn To Her" both being stand-outs for me. This was a pleasure to revisit - it sounds of its time without having dated.

We're at #11 in the charts this week on their third week of a decent 26 week run, peaking at #6 in its fourteenth week - compared to some of what we've seen this year, it feels like it deserved better. The top five this week were The Police best-of, Now Dance '86, Paul Simon, Top Gun and Madonna and the highest new entry was Elton John down at #24 - which was as high as he got with Leather Jackets, one of his lesser known offerings.

Wikipedia tells us it's their fourth album and in the run-up, following the deaths of James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon, the other original members Chrissie Hynde and Martin Chambers weren't in a great place - and Chrissie's obvious solution to this was to fire Martin from the band (he did rejoin later). And most of the rest of the entry is also about various other band members that Chrissie also fired after they'd outlived their usefulness - the only thing of interest I learned is that "Room Full Of Mirrors" is a Hendrix cover. Critical reception was middling but it did OK commercially across Europe (doing particularly well in Scandinavia for no obvious reason) and got to #25 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Slade (huh?), Big Country, Bryan Ferry and Joe Jackson - I had a quick Google and the only link I can find between The Pretenders and Slade is that there's apparently a video for "Merry Christmas Everybody" out there somewhere that has Chrissie Hynde in it (but I couldn't find it, so that was all very disappointing). I enjoyed this nostalgic revisit though - it was easily the best album of the year so far for me.

02/11/86 - A very pleasant first listen
16/11/86 - Not exactly blessed with variety

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