Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders

Hynde was (and still is) a walking contradiction, and "The Pretenders" stopped you dead in your tracks with the sound of worlds colliding. The Pretenders played a churning, chiming blend of macho rock (buzzy guitars and clattering drums) and girlish pop (bells and sighs), and on top of all that was Hynde's emotional-quicksilver voice, a dusky alto punctuated by affecting quivers, which could turn from lilting to unforgiving in the space of a couplet. The moody intimacy of her phrasing and the confessional, peephole quality of her lyrics made it impossible for listeners to separate Hynde from the girl in her songs.

There had been tough female rockers before, and tender ones, and ambitious ones, and even ones with dirty mouths, but there had never been one who was all of these things at once. And there certainly had never been one who strapped on an electric guitar and made female subjects and sensibilities, long relegated to the worlds of folk, blues and "women's music," the focal point of a rock 'n' roll band -- and a mixed-gender one at that. "I'll never feel like a man in a man's world," Hynde sang on the fade-out of "Lovers of Today" on "Pretenders" -- and for female rock fans who felt excluded from or pandered to or mocked by the music they loved, that line had a life-changing resonance.

In concert, Hynde acted out her contradictions in ways that were fascinatingly evocative -- she alternated male rock-guitarist poses (the crouch, the windmill) with graceful, swivel-kneed dance moves, and her hand gestures while singing were as delicate as a geisha's. She was also brattily provocative: "Thank you, girls," was how she'd typically acknowledge applause, and she played several shows on the band's first tour wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the word "bitch" (take that, Courtney Love). And in the age of Blondie and Pat Benatar, Hynde never flashed so much as an inch of cleavage or leg. Throughout her career, her look has remained the same (bangs in her eyes, pants, T-shirts, jackets buttoned up to the chin), although, as an animal rights activist, she has long since stopped wearing leather.