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Viva El Amor!

Certain Songs #1643: Pretenders – “Legalise Me”

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Album: Viva El Amor!
Year: 1999

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My favorite song on Viva El Amor! — and one of my favorite Pretenders songs period — was buried on the second half of the album, and featured a ringer on lead guitar.

Kicking off with what sounds like electronic drumbeats before a shouted “1, 2, 3, 4!” brings Martin Chambers in for real, “Legalise Me” (using the British spelling, natch) is pure forward momentum, guitars beeping and buzzing and Chrissie Hynde singing about one of her favorite things, weed.

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Certain Songs #1642: Pretenders – “Popstar”

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Album: Viva El Amor!
Year: 1999

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Finally! After almost 15 years of not quite getting it right, the Pretenders were well and truly a band again — Chrissie Hynde and Martin Chambers now augmented by Adam Seymour on guitar and Andy Hobson on bass — and so they made their best album since Learning to Crawl.

The album, entitled Viva El Amor! after Sire balked at her original title, Biker, featured a number of strong performances, and their cover of the Divinyls “Human” even got some airplay. But by 1999, the guitar rock that Hynde specialized in was beginning to go out of vogue, something she addressed in the scathingly hilarious opening track, “Popstar.”

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