Sweet and Sour
Back On the Chain Gang by the Pretenders
When others reached for chords of sentimentality the Pretenders often bristled. Chrissy Hynde notoriously began as a rock critic and then she branched out and into the world of music creation. As a result, she and the Pretenders always came off to me as a step ahead of the game. Their songs were carefully curated and calculated. Nothing left to chance. Few missed notes. “Back on the Chain Gang” was one of the biggest hits of the early 80’s and a song which seemingly floated on a cloud of sunshine, but which in actuality contained a deep underlying blues. A quick Google search will inform you that this song was inspired both by Ray Davies, and Chrissy’s relationship with him, and also that the song was later dedicated to her guitarist James Honeyman-Scott who had recently died from overdose.
This is a bittersweet song of memory and decline. In “Back on the Chain Gang” the narrator reflects upon a once glorious past, spurred on by viewing an old photograph. The simple image from the past creates a nostalgic vision of innocence…and yet they are back on the train and the chain gang–back to labor and penance of a sort. The imagery in the song speaks of imprisonment, a lifetime sentence. The world is against her and her lover (Ray?) and provides a wedge against their relationship. While their unity is pure, the world is all news catastrophe, television and phone–interruptions. Everything was better before, clearly.
The chain gang is a kind of exaggeration, of course, but perhaps she was feeling the increasingly hyped post-MTV media world of the 80’s. Hynde felt imprisoned by fame and the memories of a simpler innocence, shackled by circumstance. The breezy, optimistic major key structure of the song belies the fact that this song asks for solitude and independence, but instead presents a world of current obligations and strings.
Growing up in the 80’s, as I did, “Back on the Chain Gang” was ubiquitous both on the radio and on MTV–and despite its melancholy meaning, it stood out as one of those cheery 80s songs I looked forward to hearing upon each listen. I was maybe ten or eleven and in the backseat of my friend’s mom’s bronze Camaro, when we all sung along to it, replacing “part” with “fart.” “Hijacked my world at night” meant nothing to me, other than a line to belt out with my friends. I just liked the melody, the sound of it–now I understand the fuller texture. Such is the nature of the great pop song–it may be serious on the inside, but on the outside it can perk you up, make you feel something you didn’t even have a name for previously. It has the potential to give you feelings you were not even sure you had. This is what good music does.