Jackson Browne has constantly displayed a winning touch when writing about romantic relationships. As the years progressed, Browne also proved astute in branching out to capture the culture at large. His 1976 song “The Pretender” told the story of a one-time dreamer who settled in life for the path of least resistance. It comes to a kind of climax via an incredible series of lines that sums up the compromise so many of that generation seemed to be making around that time.
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Prophetic Lyrics
The word “yuppie” hadn’t really made its way into the lexicon when Jackson Browne wrote “The Pretender”, the title track to his 1976 LP. But Browne astutely saw what was coming. Frustrated that the idyllic dreams of the 60s hadn’t really come to fruition, many in Browne’s generation were focusing on building lives centered on making money and amassing material goods.
That’s why the title of “The Pretender” is so damning, even as we can’t be sure to which part of his life it refers. Was the character in the song pretending when he was younger and idealistic? Or is it now, as he falls back on mass consumption as his last recourse?
Switching back and forth between the first person and the third person, Browne both inhabits the role of this “happy idiot” and looks at him from a distance like he’s some sort of anthropological case study. Browne’s damning summation, that this poor sap has surrendered, reflects the songwriter’s feelings about society at large.
Suburban Sadness
For much of “The Pretender”, the lyrics focus on the trappings of suburbia, where all these ex-idealists have congregated on their way to a soft middle age. But what about those matters of the heart, which Browne had always so eloquently detailed in the past? It turns out he hadn’t forgotten about them.
In the run-up to the final chorus, the protagonist has decided on his final course of action. He’s going to “struggle for the legal tender.” And then comes the crucial three-line sequence that says so much about the level of his capitulation: “And believe in whatever may lie/In those things that money can buy/Though true love could have been a contender.
Brando Would Approve
These lines come on the heels of a verse where Browne talked about choosing a partner who brings him passion but no surprises. “Paint-by-number dreams” are what they can achieve, rather than “true love”.
Browne is also counting on us making an association with the phrase “could have been a contender.” It was famously used by Marlon Brando in the movie On The Waterfront, when Brando’s character bemoans the fact that he has betrayed his better angels and taken the easy way out in life.
With those three lines, Jackson Browne suggested that many people were falling into that same trap, albeit so blinded by material comforts that they might not even have realized what they’re losing in the tradeoff. In that way, “The Pretender” lives on, resurfacing whenever someone chooses the easy path to comfort over the rocky road to love.
Photo by Gary Gershoff/Getty Images
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