Ah, the sophomore slump, which can happen when an artist who spent their whole life writing their first album has only a few months to write the next. Invariably, the record they rush to release pales in comparison to the debut that made them famous. This second album, often written on a tour bus instead of a bedsit (and sounding like it), habitually falls short. After that—and if they’re lucky—the artist will get a chance to rebound with the third LP, and the sophomore effort will subsequently be relegated to the cut-out bins.
The Pretenders avoided the sophomore curse with Pretenders II (which is aptly named since it is nearly a song-for-song copy of their eponymous introductory collection). Still, the album is full of energy and verve. It features the band’s signature blend of rock swagger and pop tenderness and contains one of the finest pieces frontwoman Chrissie Hynde ever wrote. It stands amongst the band’s best LPs, but it has the sad distinction of being the last recording made by the original lineup before the untimely deaths of lead guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Farndon in 1982 and 1983, respectively.
Before that — in 1981 — the Pretenders were flying high from their debut’s success and were playing ever-larger venues on tour. Their manager, Dave Hill, was eager to strike while the iron was hot and release a follow-up. As Chrissie Hynde writes in her 2015 memoir, Reckless: “Dave Hill was panicking, desperate to get a second record out, but I didn’t have the songs written yet. I hadn’t had the time. I thought writing on the road would have happened, but it never does.”
They had found time to record a few tracks, including “Message of Love” and “Talk of the Town”, at Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris. These tunes (plus two new ones and a live recording of “Precious”) were released as the aptly named Extended Play stopgap EP in March 1981. Hynde felt their management had “jumped the gun” by releasing the new material. She explains, “We released it in the US and called it Extended Play to let the Yanks know that it wasn’t an album, but it was a mistake: they thought we’d gone soft in the head by releasing our much-anticipated second album, Extended Play, with only a handful of songs on it.” In the UK, the four new tracks were released as singles (“Message of Love” and “Talk of the Town” were backed by “Porcelain” and “Cuban Slide”, respectively). So, by the time Pretenders II came out five months later, two of its best songs were already known to the band’s devotees. And those weren’t the only songs that had a ring of familiarity.
“Birds of Paradise” and “Talk of the Town” are the highlights of Pretenders II, as they prove that for all her hard rock posturing, Chrissie Hynde can write the hell out of a ballad. Specifically, the former is a meditation on innocence lost and the road not taken (as seen from the vantage point of someone who’s vaulted to stardom, became prey to the vagaries of fame, and wished for a simpler time, all the while knowing there is no way back). Written in epistolary form to a long-lost friend, the song is full of melancholic regret at the chasm separating the two. I still get chills at the drum break that precedes its turning point: “One time, when we took off our clothes / But you were cryin’” and then again as Pete Farndon’s countermelody underscores Hynde’s plaintive lyrics: “Please don’t forget / Do forgive me”. From: https://www.popmatters.com/pretenders-ii-atr-40
