![]() But the situation for a sixty-two-year-old songwriting woman is not sanguine. It was a marginal effort compared with the band’s previous one, “Loose Screw” (2002), a strong collection that should have made Hynde something-more famous, more respected. ![]() The last Pretenders album, “Break Up the Concrete,” came out in 2008. A younger listener would be forgiven for not knowing Hynde, or how she does business. The connection was suggested by Hynde’s publishing company, “a kind of old-fashioned way of doing it,” she told me. Though her best-known work is credited to the Pretenders, an act that was formed in 1978, in London, her new album was written and recorded with the Swedish musician Björn Yttling-a member of Peter Bjorn and John, and a producer for Lykke Li. A native of Akron, who has lived in England for more than forty years, she just released the excellent “Stockholm,” the first full-length album to be credited to her alone. In another world, the movements of a musician like Chrissie Hynde would be closely tracked and regularly celebrated. Photograph by Sofia Sanchez and Mauro Mongiello “Get in your car, and turn it up.Hynde’s best songs are of a piece with the work of Ray Davies and Pete Townshend. “Rise above the fray,” Nicks advised as her band exited. The night closed with the Mac perennial “Landslide,” and 40 years and hundreds of covers later, there’s still nothing that properly prepares you for the sound of Nicks’ simultaneously gravelly and feathery wisp intoning that first “Took my love, and I took it down…” In a time of national tumult and insecurity, the song can’t help but take on a “Hallelujah”-like resonance, and its healing powers were on full display at MSG as the crowd belted every word along with their leader. That rapture that only built through set closer “Edge of Seventeen” - with a “When Doves Cry”-cribbed outro, paying tribute to Nicks’ late friend Prince, who she’d previously talked about building early hit “Stand Back” with - and first encore, the witchy-woman all-timer “Rhiannon.” It was enough delayed gratification that when her drummer launched into the arid, cowbell-led clomp of the Rumours closer “Gold Dust Woman,” the building erupted in release. “There’s nothing like a tragic love affair,” Nicks concluded.įor most of her set, Nicks kept Fleetwood Mac material to a minimum, only including 1982’s “Gypsy” among her first 14 songs. The centerpiece of the performance was undoubtedly “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream),” the dramatic power ballad whose recording reinvigorated Nicks’ solo career in the early ’10s, and which she now calls “my favorite song I’ve ever written.” The singer/songwriter, cultivating a family atmosphere throughout the evening with her convivial storytelling - even the introduction of her band, which she promised to keep brief, was deeply felt enough to take ten minutes - explained the origins of the song as having been inspired by the doomed romance at the heart of the Twilight film franchise. ![]() “It’s not gonna be the same show that you’re used to seeing,” she warned of her gig to come, instead promising “magical gothic things from my gothic trunk of secrets and mysteries.” What followed was a set full of little-heard rarities like “Starshine,” a reject from 1981 solo debut Bella Donna that eventually ended up on 2014’s 24 Karat Gold – Songs From the Vault and “Crying in the Night,” a Buckingham-Nicks-era favorite that Nicks rarely played live before this tour. Stevie Nicks' Top 10 Biggest Billboard HitsĮven with that early moment of fan wish-fulfillment, Nicks made it clear early in her set that crowd-pleasing wasn’t going to be her primary goal for the evening. The Church of Stevie was definitely in session from the opening songs of her headlining set, and her lead disciple even came back on stage to serve as her Tom Petty on a stellar duet of Nicks’ breakout solo hit, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.” “I’m gonna marry her,” declared an ecstatic Hynde after the performance. Of course, the real figure of worship for Hynde on stage was her touring partner, the iconic singer/songwriter and Fleetwood Mac frontwoman Stevie Nicks, who Hynde gushed about throughout her set (“It’s like being on tour with Elizabeth Taylor!”). Hynde introduced their latest single “Holy Communion” as a song about “religious tolerance,” but then shortened that to just “tolerance,” declaring hopefully: “If you’re answering to him” - pointing skyward - “You’re probably going to be all right.” The Pretenders stayed mostly apolitical throughout their set, though perhaps inevitably for a show by a punk-bred band in the year 2016, there was a sense of desperation throughout, as songs like “My City Was Gone” took on extra significance, and even the group’s more personal numbers felt as hefty as hymns. Stevie Nicks on Crafting a Setlist for 24 Karat Gold Tour, Possible Fleetwood Mac Album & Wishing…
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