After the complicated stomp of “Tattooed Love Boys,” side one of Pretenders went in a different direction, a slow instrumental with double entendre title of “Space Invader,” ostensibly named after a very popular arcade game of the time, highlighted by a big, rumbly Pete Farndon bass and out-of-nowhere guitar outbursts from James Honeyman-Scott that I absolutely loved. At the fade, they brought in some of the actual noises from the Space Invaders arcade game, which segued instantly to what might be my favorite song on Pretenders, the utterly incandescent “The Wait,” one of most exciting rock ‘n’ roll songs that anybody has ever performed.
I’ve often joked that Pretenders turned me from a boy into a man, and the moment Chrissie Hynde exclaimed “huuuuuuuhhhhh!” and the chittering, stuttering riff that dominates “The Wait” explodes out of the speakers is when I pretty sure it happened. (If it indeed, ever happened. Jury’s still out.) Coming after an initial outburst of guitars and drums that still hadn’t quite found a direction, it’s like Hynde is telling the song “follow me.” And boy does it ever. Weirdly enough, unlike most of the other songs on Pretenders (“The Phone Call” excepted, of course), the lyrics and singing on “The Wait” are more impressionistic and mixed lower, Hynde’s vocals becoming part of the song instead of dominating, everything being subsumed to the amazing riff (heretofore referred to as THE RIFF because I’ve been air-guitaring to it for nearly 40 years) at the heart of the song, spitting out the words to map the build up to THE RIFF’s explosion.
Said the wait child magic child work it on out now work it
The wait child pinball child pool hall child hurts
The wait child pacing child forth back now hurts
The wait child neon light late night lights hurt
And then, with Farndon picking up his bass and running away from the rest of the band as fast has he can, there’s a quick chorus while they all catch up to him and drag him back to THE RIFF.
Oh gonna hurt some child child
Gonna hurt some whoa my baby
After the second chorus, the guitars drop out and over a still on-fire Farndon and ever-sturdy Martin Chambers, Hynde sings actual words on the bridge.
I said child, child staring into the streetlight
Messed up child lonely boy tonight
Kick the wall turn the street and back again
Oh boy you’ve been forgotten
And with that, James Honeyman-Scott just totally and completely takes off: cramming about 5000 guitar solos into one, all skyrockets and pinwheels and air raid sirens and the end of the fucking world rolled into several bars of glorious noisy chaos that seems like it would be impossible to stop until it smashes headlong into THE RIFF and dissipates like a massive wave into a giant wall as Chrissie Hynde exclaims yet another dick-hardening “huuuuuuuuuhhhh!” before one last verse and chorus.
All in all, “The Wait” is an utterly tremendous and incredibly exciting piece of music, and the fact that it came after five other stunners, each one completely different from the others and yet all infused with everything I loved about rock and roll back then — and everything I still love about it — meant that it didn’t even matter that the rest of the album wasn’t quite as ovaries-to-the-wall powerful for it to totally and completely wipe me out. From: https://medialoper.com/certain-songs-1630-pretenders-the-wait/
