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Pretenders II is the second studio album by British rock band the Pretenders, issued on Sire Records in August 1981. It incorporates two songs that had been released as singles in the UK and placed on an EP in the US. It peaked at #7 on the UK Albums Chart and #10 on the Billboard 200, and has been certified a gold record for sales by the RIAA. It is the final album by the original line-up, as the following year bassist Pete Farndon was dismissed and guitarist James Honeyman-Scott died in the same week. Farndon died in 1983, and a new line-up would make the band's next album, Learning to Crawl.
History
The success of their 1979 debut album created a great demand for more material from the fledgling band; however, a lack of songs precluded the quick release of a follow-up album. In the UK, the band released two hit singles in 1980 and early 1981, "Talk of the Town" followed by "Message of Love". In the US, where standalone singles had become rare, these tracks were combined with three others for a stopgap extended play release in March 1981 called, unsurprisingly, Extended Play. This album was released a scant two months later to mixed critical reception, partly because two of the better songs on the album had been previously released, and partly because many of the songs were viewed as overly-similar (though not quite as groundbreaking) to the band's debut.[citation needed] Nevertheless, several of the album's songs became hits and the album has increased in critical stature with time.[citation needed]
As on their previous album, the band includes a Kinks cover, in this case "I Go to Sleep". Band leader Chrissie Hynde had a personal relationship with Kinks' frontman Ray Davies. It also includes the sexually-forward tunes "Bad Boys Get Spanked" and "The Adultress", with perhaps the album's most ambitious track, "Day After Day" spinning a common second-album narrative of unaccustomed celebrity, with the band rushing from gig to gig, hotel to hotel, head-spun from the swiftness of it all.[citation needed] The song ends suddenly, mid-guitar-solo, with the sound of a crashing fighter plane. The song "Louie, Louie" is an original composition and not a version of the identically titled and often covered song by Richard Berry.
In 2000 it was voted number 403 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums.[13] The following year, twenty years after its release, it was certified gold in the United States.[14]
Reissues
Rhino released a re-mastered edition of Pretenders II in 2006, including a second disc of live tracks and outtakes.[15] Most of the tracks on the bonus disc originally appeared as a Warner Bros. 1982 promotional live album, Pretenders Live at the Santa Monica Civic. Specialist label Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs (known as MFSL or MoFi) released a re-mastered version in 2010.[16] The track listing, however, reverted to that of the original release, without bonus tracks. A further 2015 reissue repeated the original album plus bonus disc of the 2006 version with two additional bonus tracks, this time including a DVD containing four promotional videos and two appearances by the band on Top of the Pops.[17]
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