Pretenders: Pretenders (LP)

The milieu the Pretenders created on their seminal debut album in the early 1980s was entirely new. Creative and original, the band struck a nerve and one of the greatest singer-songwriters in music history appeared on the scene in Chrissie Hynde. The Ohio-born singer moved in the same punk orbit with her three British musician colleagues Pete Farndon, James Honeyman-Scott and Martin Chambers. As Pretenders, they were more than the sum of their parts. Schooled in raw, unfiltered British punk, they also mastered rockabilly, new wave pop and the sound of the British Invasion. Together, they sounded like no other band ever had - and that's what keeps them sounding young and unspent today.