Earlier this week, the great Alfred Soto posted on his blog, that being Humanizing the Vacuum, the latest in his wildly entertaining Worst Songs Ever series. Focused on an unfortunate single from 1994 by the Pretenders, that being the ploddingly lugubrious “I’ll Stand By You,” a mawkish ode that – to my ears – owed precious little (pardon the pun) to everything that made the original band so great, Soto points out how seemingly at odds with Chrissie Hynde’s natural tendencies it is and scrutinizes the context of the era in which it was released, somewhat cruelly noting that the track in question was her biggest seller. That broke my heart, a little bit.
Personally speaking, I still prefer to remember Chrissie Hynde as the Buckeye ex-pat-turned-British-Punk (see above, as pilfered from Carpe1501), who applied the rocking ferocity of same to a penchant for great, classic songwriting, not the soggy, milksopped tripe that was “I’ll Stand By You.”
More on the Pretenders from Flaming Pablum:
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