Heartbreak and soaring beauty on Chrissie Hynde & Pals' Duets Special

A key part of Chrissie Hynde’s brilliance and longevity has always been her ability to keep multiple musical personas going at once. She’s the grizzled but urbane street poet in the Bob Dylan / Lou Reed mould. She’s the pop craftswoman, always in search of that three minutes of perfect sweetness, even through the punk years.

And then there’s the one that creates the real alchemy, that elevates the other characters, and makes something greater than the sum of the parts: there’s Chrissie Hynde the unabashed romantic. 

That’s been expressed, of course, in her own songs like “I’ll Stand by You,” "Hymn to Her" and co – but also in absolutely masterful choices of cover versions, from The Kinks’ “Stop Your Sobbing” right at the start of The Pretenders’ career, through her acid house era bravura take on Jon & Vangelis / Donna Summer’s “State of Independence” with Moodswings, to her 2019 covers album Valve Bone Woe with The Valve Bone Woe Ensemble. That last album was distinctly cool, taking in Nick Drake, Nina Simone even John Coltrane in a spacey jazz setting. It’s very beautiful, but very subtle too. 

Not this duets record, though. This goes for the emotional jugular from the start and won’t let go. Everything you need to know, really, is in the tracklist and the collaborator names. 10CC “I’m Not in Love”, Me & Mrs Jones” crooned beautifully by Hynde and k.d. lang as album opener, a trio of Elvis’s biggest and weepiest signature songs: come on, this is not signalling restraint is it? Then add the other singers – Rufus Wainwright, Dave Gahan, Debbie Harry, Shirley Manson, Lucinda Williams and on and on… at very, very worst this could have been vaudevillian schmalz, but really given all of the above you’re expecting big things aren’t you?  

It does not disappoint. It’s hard to pick highpoints, but a curveball of Morrissey’s “First of the Gang to Die” with Cat Power certainly adds piquancy among the more straitghtforward relationship songs, and Brenda Holloway’s Motown minor hit “Every Little Bit Hurts” with Carleen Anderson is sheer dynamite. But there isn’t a weak link. The backing is stripped-down country-soul style with no smoothing off of rough edges. Every singer resists any temptation to showboat, so the chemistry in each duet is wonderful, and Hynde’s own voice – at 74 – s as good as it’s ever been. This is the album that Hynde the romantic has always had in her, and it is devastatingly good. 

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Listen to "Me & Mrs Jones":