(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Stills)
Thu 5 February 2026 10:00, UK
There was a presumption, perhaps, that The Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde might have mellowed a bit by the mid-1980s.
Compared to her ‘dangerous youth’ phase in the 1970s, when she was hanging out with Lemmy at biker bars, Hynde was now in her mid-30s, a mother of two, and writing music that was fairly dull at the edges, like the John McEnroe-inspired pop hit ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’. One line from that relatively sappy 1986 single is relevant, however: “Don’t get me wrong / If I fall in the mode of passion”.
Like her friend McEnroe, the fiery tennis player, Hynde was sometimes prone to an outburst or two, not because of a bad call by a line judge, but as a result of her own deeply held views about the many frustrating failures of society and the people who could, but weren’t, doing anything about it.
In many cases, it was her American homeland that was taking the brunt of her vitriol, from good old Ronald Reagan to a parade of fellow rock stars she had no problem labelling as sellouts, specifically those willing to become endorsement shills for big corporations.
“The reason there’s all these people starving, two-thirds of the world, is because of big companies like Pepsi Cola,” Hynde told Smash Hits in 1986, “It’s not the only reason, but it all adds up… All these musicians are doing adverts and jingles for Burger Chef and every other bullshit product there is. It’s sell, sell, sell.”
Of course, while Hynde grew up in Akron, Ohio, USA, she had long since relocated to the UK, meaning that Old Blighty was just as likely to land in her critical crosshairs.
The many attendees of the Live Aid concert in 1985. (Credits: Far Out / Band Aid Trust / BBC)
“Remember in this country when they first introduced the 20 pence coin?” she said, referring to the rollout of the new denomination of British currency in 1982, “It was on the front cover of all the newspapers, with [the headline] ‘We Don’t Want It!’ The English are petty. There’s no question. That’s alright, but it’s not alright when your petty-mindedness just allows you to sink into an ignorant muzz.”
Like a lot of artists who’d come of age in the late 1960s, Hynde was coming to the realisation in the ’80s that the big, idealistic dreams of her youth were getting railroaded by capitalistic distractions, for lack of a better term. “I’d just like to see someone push this revolution along a little bit,” she said, adding that she didn’t think anybody “could stomach any more Live Aid type of stuff”.
Hynde’s most passionate cause has always been animal rights, and that fight was looking particularly bleak to her in the mid-1980s. “You’re going to keep buying soap that’s made out of animal fats and never think about it,” she said, “because you’re too worried about what’s going to happen on EastEnders tonight. That’s where most of the people are at, and that kinda pisses me off. If you ask most people if they’d rather be shot in the back of the head or the front of the face, they will choose the back of the head because they don’t want to see it coming.”
She continued her tirade, before ending quite dramatically, “You can walk around in a haze and be appeased by the fact that you’re going to get a new car next month or that you might get laid this weekend and you can keep perpetuating your existence on these petty little gratifications and keep your eyes closed for the next few years and then… BANG!”
Hynde sounded like someone primed to record a rollicking, political, punk rock album to rally and wake up her large audience, but the Pretenders’ 1986 record Get Close, while delivering two number one hits, was one of their softest, love-dovey efforts to date, sounding more like her then-husband Jim Kerr’s band, Simple Minds. Fans who wanted the angry and rebellious Hynde would have to settle for her magazine interviews for a while.
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