An amazing 2023 for Chrissie Hynde saw her play at Glastonbury with Dave Grohl and Johnny Marr, then the release of the twelfth Pretenders album, the appropriately titled Relentless.
Relentless, the 12th and latest studio album from The Pretenders, is aptly named. Since forming in 1978, the group has endured deaths – guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, in 1982, and bassist Pete Farndon, in 1983 – as well as line-up changes and the vagaries of popular culture. Through it all, frontwoman Chrissie Hynde has remained the sole constant force behind the group.
But since 2008, she’s had an equally persistent partner in James Walbourne, who has served as her musical foil.
Walbourne is not only a guitarist but also Hynde’s writing partner, co-writing the band’s last two albums with her. On Relentless, Hynde and Walbourne combine familiar elements of the band’s past work with some unexpected twists and turns, which makes for a different-sounding album from its predecessor, 2020’s Hate For Sale.
“We did want to have a punchier, punkier sound on Hate and we were looking toward a different approach for this record – something a little more low-key,” Hynde tells us. “We used keyboards on a lot of the songs when we recorded it. Having said that, after the initial recording, I got James to re-do a lot of the bass lines. It was almost too lightweight and soft. At the end of the day, we’re a rock band, so things did toughen up when we actually recorded the songs.”
How did the two of you start writing together?
Chrissie Hynde: I had such a great live relationship with James –he’s such a fantastic player and a great showman as well –and I think I was slightly nervous about writing with him. I was worried that if I tried writing with him and it didn’t work out, it might jeopardise the good thing that we had going.
James Walbourne: It took us over ten years to write a song together. The first song was You Can’t Hurt AFool, from Hate For Sale. The floodgates opened after that, but it was so nerve wracking when I sent her my first ideas, knowing how great she is as a writer.
Hynde: With Hate For Sale, we had a very specific plan about how we wanted to write together, and we stuck to it. During lockdown, we decided to do some Bob Dylan covers, just for something to do. I’d put some chords down on my phone and send it to him, and he’d work on it and send it back to me, and that was how we put those Dylan songs together that became Standing In The Doorway in 2021. With that process working so well, we just carried on in the same way with the songs for this album.
Walbourne: Chrissie would just send the lyrics, with no guidelines at all as to how it should sound. I’d work out all the musical parts and send them back. Of course, as soon as she starts singing, it sounds entirely different from the version that I
