“Was a time wanted you for mine,
nobody knew.
You arrived like a day,
and passed like a cloud.
I made a wish,
I said it out loud.”

History Lesson: Talk of the Town was named after a real London nightspot, located in Leicester Square. It opened in 1900 as “The London Hippodrome”, and it played host to various circus acts, variety shows and musical performances. In 1958, it was renovated and reopened as “The Talk of the Town”, becoming a cabaret restaurant where many artists would perform, including Frank Sinatra and The Temptations. It closed in 1982, and was revived as a club called “The Hippodrome”. In 2009, it was once again closed, this time with plans to make it a casino. The song itself, with its unobtainable love feel to it, has been rumored to be about Ray Davies of the Kinks, who later fathered a child with Chrissie Hynde.

Personal Reflection: This song was my first Pretenders favorite. I first heard it around my early adolescence when every crush was unrequited, and always felt like true love. I clung to songs that teased at the somewhere, sometime, somehow we will be together because that kind of naive hope is the stuff that kept my friends and I up all night, on the phone, fantasizing about a love life we could never really know right then, nor accurately imagine. The more mature concepts of this song flew fast and furiously past me, but they sit and stick now, as a woman in her forties listening again. I still get the unrequited love thing, though I think it evolved into a what could have been, or a what changed along the way from what it was, or could have been, instead of a someday wish. It is still a favorite of mine from the 80’s , and an all-time favorite from the Pretenders.

Talk of the Town :: Pretenders

“My 80’s Favorites”