Kid -- The Pretenders
The Needle and the Damage Done -- The Pretenders
Creep -- The Pretenders
Back on the Chain Gang -- The Pretenders
I Shall Be Released -- The Pretenders
My Baby -- The Pretenders
That woman does not get enough credit. She can sing any damn thing there is to be sung. She is among the greatest composers working in the two-and-a-half to three-minute pop song genre of our time. She's plays a lovely understated rhythm guitar. She's the kind of girl who knows how to wear a Telecaster. And she has the most authentic version of that particular rock hairdo still living. When she did "Needle and the Damage Done" on the same tour as the above clip of "Creep," with the string arrangement and all that stuff, I cried and cried as if two of my own band members, one of whom was also the lover about whom I had written "Kid," had died drug-related deaths in quick succession during a formative period of my life. And I've never even been in a band.
Also, she was one of the 1970 rioters and ROTC-building-burners at Kent State, way back in her pre-Anglicized youth. Didja know that?
