Album: Pretenders II
Year: 1981
. . .
As you can imagine, after the twin triumphs of Pretenders and the Extended Play EP, I was totally looking forward to the follow-up. And I was totally disappointed.
Now, by no stretch of the imagination is Pretenders II a bad album, and I loved how the cover hearkened back to the days when the Rolling Stones would glower at you from one of their mid-1980s album covers — though Chrissie Hynde said in her book that she didn’t like it because of the airbrushing both made it look fake and yet still couldn’t hide Pete Farndon’s heroin pallor (not as bad as Brian Jones on the cover of Between The Buttons, but still) — but for a band who had made their name eschewing formula, it seemed, well . . . formulaic.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1637: Pretenders – “Pack It Up”