How Some Outside Help Spurred on The Pretenders’ Final Top 40 Hit

Resilience and adaptability have always been hallmarks of The Pretenders. Chrissie Hynde, the band’s one constant, has always exemplified those characteristics. That’s why the band has continuously overcome adversity and tragedy along its winding musical road.

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Hynde realized at one point during that journey that she might need a little help delivering a song that could put her band back in the spotlight. That decision led to the last Top 40 US hit by this venerable outfit.

Hynde Hangs Tough

Chrissie Hynde’s singing and songwriting have always been front and center for The Pretenders. Everyone and everything around her in the band’s orbit has changed and then changed again since they burst onto the scene with their debut album in 1980.

Hynde’s focus and talent kept the band afloat and potent during some pretty dark times. In the early 80s, a pair of their original members died of overdoses. Instead of folding up the tent, Hynde cobbled together some new collaborators, wrote a bunch of stellar songs, and delivered Learning To Crawl, the 1984 LP that many consider The Pretenders’ peak.

By the early 90s, however, it looked very much like the band’s run of commercial relevance had ended. The 1990 album Packed! was the first by The Pretenders that failed to score a Top 40 chart hit in either the UK or the US. Hynde responded by changing the lineup and the approach for their next record four years later.

Key Collaborators

Lineup turnover was nothing new for The Pretenders, who had been enduring it pretty much nonstop since Learning To Crawl. The musicians (aside from Hynde) who contributed to the band’s 1994 album Last Of The Independents were almost completely different from those who helped out with Packed!

But one major difference with Last Of The Independents was Chrissie Hynde’s decision to start collaborating with outside writers. Most other albums featured songs written solely by Hynde, those written by other band members, and cover songs. On this LP, Hynde, in search of a hit, looked outside for help.

As luck would have it, two very popular songwriters-for-hire had Hynde high on their wish list of potential collaborators. Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, either together or separately, had contributed to massive hits by Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, The Bangles, and more. Hynde joined up with the pair to write five songs together on the album. That included the breakthrough single.

Taking a “Stand”

For her part, Chrissie Hynde worried that “I’ll Stand By You” was a bit slight. Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly thought it might be too soft, at least compared to the toughness that signified much of the rest of The Pretenders’ catalog.

All overcame their concerns. “I’ll Stand By You” was chosen as the first single for the album. The stirring ballad featured a standout vocal performance from Hynde. And it achieved exactly what she had hoped it would do. It made it to No. 16 on the US charts in 1994.

That turned out to be the last time The Pretenders made it that high. “Night In My Veins”, a rocker also penned by Hynde, Steinberg, and Kelly, landed at No. 71 as the follow-up single. No song by the band has ever reached the Top 100 since then. “I’ll Stand By You”, the product of a canny decision from a rock legend, was the last of them.

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