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No, no, and a thousand times no. The Pretenders shouldn’t ever even think about doing bouncy, uptempo, radio-friendly, romantic imagery love songs. That’s like Michelle Obama going camping. Or Barack Obama trying to wage war. There’s nothing wrong with camping and sometimes war must be waged, but it just isn’t their thing, ya know? The Pretenders are supposed to be about angry sex and angry drugs and angry about everything.
And Chrissy Hynde should never, ever try to pass herself off as Diana Rigg. I like Chrissy, in a tough rocker-chick way. But that’s about as far from Rigg as I am from sober at 10:22 on a Friday night. And that guy, whoever he is, is no Patrick Macnee, either. Nobody rocks the bowler like Macnee, and really, that style hat ought to have been permanently retired after The Avengers went off the air.
Yet somehow… somehow it all works. The video is such an honest and respectful homage to the TV show, that you know everyone involved must have been real fans. And the song? It gives you the feeling that Hynde — yes, Chrissy Hynde — might actually have been happy and in love when she wrote it. There’s even a melody you can almost whistle, which also makes it nearly unique among Pretenders songs. Producers Jimmy Iovine and Bob Clearmountain must have been tempted to pop it up with a bunch of studio bells and whistles, but they restrained themselves.
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