"Private Life" - The Pretenders
Wasn't in the mood for a love song last night.
Really excellent live version of the song from 1981, while the late great James Honeyman Scott and Pete Farndon were both still alive and kicking. This came on the ipod the other day at the gym -- I usually move on because it's too slow. (I need a certain uptempo quality to what I listen to or I die on the spot.) Anyway, I made myself listen for the first time in a while and was reminded what an amazing, hard song this is and how well it holds up 30 years after its release. And Chrissie Hynde's persona resonates with me even more at age 49 than it did at 19. I like the kind of slow dub/reggae feel they achieve -- and Scott was just a unique sounding guy.
Favorite verse:
Your sentimental gestures only bore me to death
You've made a desperate appeal now save your breath
Attachment to obligation through guilt and regret
Shit -- that's so wet
And your sex life complications are not my fascinations
As I say, a hard song. The use of the British "wet" for "weak" shows how successful Hynde was in her Anglophilia.
