Pretenders – Talk Of The Town

Built Around A Beatles Chord

When The Pretenders released “Talk of the Town” in March 1980, Chrissie Hynde was playing around with a chord she really liked but couldn’t quite place. She brought it to guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, who immediately identified it as a Beatles chord—specifically, a B7. Hynde built the entire song around that melancholy chord, creating what would become one of the band’s most beautiful singles. The song peaked at number eight on the UK singles chart, entering at number twenty-one and climbing to its peak position in just three weeks. While it never charted in the United States as a single, it received heavy rotation on album-oriented rock stations and became a fan favorite at live concerts.

The inspiration behind the song remained a mystery for nearly two decades until Hynde finally revealed it during a 1999 BBC Songwriters’ Circle special. She’d written it about a young fan who used to stand outside their soundchecks during the Pretenders’ first tour. Hynde never spoke to him and couldn’t think of anything to say. The last time she saw him, she left him standing in the snow and walked away. Years later, she wrote the song as a way of thinking about him, adding during the broadcast that in the unlikely event he was watching, she wanted him to know she did think about him after all. The song’s title also referenced Talk of the Town, a famous London nightclub Hynde was paying homage to.

The recording sessions took place in Paris, marking one of the first songs written after the success of their debut album Pretenders. Honeyman-Scott’s jangly guitar work interweaves with Hynde’s acoustic throughout the track, creating layers of melody that defined the Pretenders’ sound. Martin Chambers’ drumming provided the rhythmic foundation, with his distinctive snare hits punctuating the arrangement. The song opens with a tangle of electric and acoustic guitars before settling into a gorgeous pop structure. Hynde later said that Honeyman-Scott was the melodic one in the band, explaining that when they met, she was an angry punk guitar player and singer, and he brought out all the melody in her. His influence on The Smiths’ Johnny Marr was so profound that Marr cited Honeyman-Scott’s jingle-jangle guitar style as his last important influence before going out on his own.

The single was released with “Cuban Slide” as the B-side in most territories, though the US release paired it with their previous single “Stop Your Sobbing”. It first appeared on the US release Extended Play in March 1981 alongside “Cuban Slide”, before being included on the band’s second studio album Pretenders II later that year in a slightly shortened version. The Extended Play EP also featured “Message of Love”, “Porcelain”, and a live version of “Precious”, making it one of the strongest EP releases of the early eighties. At the time, Hynde found confidence in the radio success of these singles, noting that people still liked the band and they were getting airplay with “Message of Love”, “Talk of the Town”, and their cover of Ray Davies’ “I Go to Sleep”.

Pretenders II would become the final album featuring the original lineup of Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Farndon. In June 1982, at Honeyman-Scott’s insistence, the band dismissed Farndon due to his increasingly severe heroin addiction. Two days later, on June 16, 1982, Honeyman-Scott was found dead in a girlfriend’s apartment from heart failure caused by cocaine intolerance. He was just twenty-five years old. Farndon couldn’t escape his own demons and died of an overdose the following year. The tragic losses devastated the band and changed their sound forever, as Hynde later said Honeyman-Scott really was the Pretenders’ sound.

Critics have consistently praised “Talk of the Town” as a highlight of Pretenders II. Rolling Stone’s Tom Carson lauded how beautifully Hynde grasped the rapturousness of success in the song, understanding both the person left behind and the person whose place in the world has changed. AllMusic praised the breezy melody and literate, confessional writing as head and shoulders above what passed for a pop single at the beginning of the eighties. Garbage gave the song a tribute in their 1998 hit “Special”, with Shirley Manson repeating the line about being the talk of the town in the outro while borrowing the vocal melody. When Manson contacted Hynde to ask permission to use the sample, Hynde agreed without asking for credit or royalties, telling Manson she could sample her sounds, her voice, or indeed her very ass.

“Talk of the Town” remains one of the most emotionally resonant singles from the new wave era, capturing the distance between performer and audience, success and loneliness, and the things we wish we’d said to people we never really knew. For anyone discovering the Pretenders’ catalog, this track showcases everything that made the original lineup special—Hynde’s vulnerable vocals, Honeyman-Scott’s melodic genius, and the chemistry that made them one of the defining bands of their era. And somewhere out there, maybe that kid who stood in the snow finally heard the song Chrissie Hynde wrote for him.