It’s hard to overstate just how much Chrissie Hynde has influenced me. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like had I not studied, scrutinized, analyzed, and ultimately loved The Pretenders from an early age—too early, actually, but I can’t take that back now.

Let me set the scene: Nowheresville, Wisconsin. Roughly 1980, but it felt very 1970s. I was a good kid, Type A with constant anxiety about doing the right thing, excelling in school, staying out of trouble. I was obsessed with ballet, most especially Mikhail Baryshnikov, plus reading, music, and getting straight As.

That would blow up spectacularly quite soon. (See Reviving Ophelia for clues.)

If you’ve been reading my blog you’ll know that I was raised on 70s music, from lite pop on AM radio to the sexual politics of Fleetwood Mac to the sophistication of Carly Simon, which I discovered in my older brothers’ and sisters’ record collections. On my own I listened to kid-friendly fare, such as John Denver, Olivia Newton-John, Andy Gibb, a little disco-era Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer thrown in too. The Grease soundtrack loomed large in my life.

Enter New Wave and punk. I thumbed through my sister’s collection of first albums from a lot of fantastic artists: Elvis Costello, The Police, Blondie, The Clash. And I am here to tell you that a lot of this transfixed me as I truly struggled to comprehend what the hell was going on. If I was too young to process “Dreams,” then “Roxanne” truly blew my mind.

And then my brother brought home the first Pretenders album. Seriously? It’s 2023 and I am still discovering new sounds and ideas buried within. So imagine little me, the good kid, trying to make sense of it.

Let’s start with the album cover. It’s a classic. Many have attempted it, but none have matched its spare challenge to the world. Chrissie. Chrissie! I thought that you had to look like Olivia Newton-John or Debby Boone to succeed—a bland, hormoneless Barbie of a pop star. Even Debbie Harry died her hair blonde (at least some of it) to both assimilate into and mock conventional ideas of beauty.

Chrissie Hynde did not give a shit. She was punk—but also had a shag haircut, which was decidedly uncool unless you were Chrissie. She wore leather, she snarled, she bore a hole into your brain with her feline eyes. She wanted your attention, but she was not going to make the first move. You were going to have to fight her first.

And oh my god she was American. Midwestern. You cannot get less cool than Ohio. OK, Wisconsin, true, but Ohio is a close second.

So you can understand why I was transfixed. Representation matters. This was a woman who didn’t look like a pop star and didn’t give a crap about following a fad. She was simply being herself.

On to the music. I still listen to this album often—like, at least once a week—and I still find new things in it. It baffled me then and it baffles me still. It’s a sui generis album, totally. Like, what is it? It doesn’t fit into any genre, although it was marketed as New Wave or punk, simply because it was released in 1979 and there was no other label for it. It was New Wave because it was English and had melodies. It was punk, but not the kind of punk that The Clash or Sex Pistols were pumping out. The Pretenders actually crafted songs with hooks and melodies and layers. (So many layers!) But, yeah, “Precious” is punk, “Tattooed Love Boys” is punk, “The Phone Call” and “The Wait” are… I’m not sure what. “Lovers of Today” and “Mystery Achievement” are rock. “Kid” is… “Kid” is Chrissie’s response to “Stop Your Sobbing,” I guess.

And “Brass in Pocket” is in a category of its own with its finger-popping swagger, inscrutable lyrics, clear demands, and lingering wistfulness. Chrissie wanted to be seen, but she wasn’t relying on her looks. She was daring you to look a little deeper, past the haircut and snarl and cat eyes.

Well, all of this rattled around in my brain then, and rattles around in my brain even still. Chrissie Hynde showed me that it was okay not to be a girly girl, you could make controversial choices and still survive, you could be one of the guys but not one of the guys (“No, I’ll never be like a man in a man’s world”). It was a hard but useful lesson for me to learn when I was a pre-teen. I found the way forward and kept chasing it. I’m still chasing it. Thank you, Chrissie.