“The Pretender” is an extremely amazing, sad, and truthful song written by Jackson Browne in 1976 for his album with the same exact name. This song is so powerful musically and lyrically, and it takes many listens to appreciate the instrumentation for what it really is and accept the brutal honesty of the lyrics. Most who know Jackson Browne expect incredible things to come from anything that he creates, but this song is on a completely different level. This is a song that excludes the sugarcoating, the games, etc. These words depict so many people that we all know and love, and perhaps it even depicts ourselves.
Although the instrumentation is not as significant as the lyrics, it still holds such value to the message. The music in this song is impactful enough to the point where it’s catchy but not taking away from the lyrics. The song includes the typical rock band set up: guitars, pianos, drums, and vocals. To describe the musicality in a condensed way, it’s simply traditional American rock music.
The lyrics in this song are more than just words on a page and melodies that are sung; it’s poetry. Jackson Browne’s message in this song deals with the battle between true love and living a normal life. He speaks of letting the norms of buying a house, going to work every day, spending money on things to make us happy; the typical American lifestyle get in the way of true love. Browne is using “The Pretender” character to describe the typical American yuppie, or cookie-cutter citizen, in a way that makes us think about our decisions thus far in life. Should we settle for the house, the car, and the mediocre love, or should we fight and chase for true love and seek happiness through people and experiences?
The first verse sort of introduces the normal American lifestyle. “I'm going to rent myself a house in the shade of the freeway I'm going to pack my lunch in the morning and go to work each day…” And the hook of this verse and verses after, “I'll get up and do it again, amen. Say it again. Amen,” really illustrates the redundancy of a complacent life.
In the second verse, the “Pretender” starts questioning if his decision to stop chasing true love and settle down was a good choice. “I want to know what became of the changes we waited for love to bring. Were they only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening?” The character also acknowledges how fast time is going by and is most likely thinking of how he knows his days for true love and fantasy are slipping away.
The song features two choruses with similar melodies and in the first chorus the “Pretender” weighs out the “longing for love” and “the struggle for the legal tender” in a suburban and presumably uninteresting place to live. Then, Browne goes into third person or another character and writes, “Out into the cool of the evening strolls the Pretender. He knows that all his hopes and dreams begin and end there.” This is such a heavy lyric and really makes listeners question if they are living life the way that they’ve always wanted to.
The bridge of the song speaks in a bitter tone, “Ah the laughter of the lovers as they run through the night, leaving nothing for the others but to choose off and fight.” The “Pretenders” always end up bitter at people who are truly in love because they never took their chance.
But, in the verse after the bridge the “Pretender” starts dreaming of what he really wanted out of this life to begin with. “I'm going to find myself a girl who can show me what laughter means and we'll fill in the missing colors in each other's paint-by-number dreams.” The “Pretender” definitely wants that true love but perhaps feels that it’s too late for all of that.
The second and final chorus for the song unfortunately disregards that initial longing for love and the “Pretender” settles for it all; the money, the car, the house, the mediocre love. “I'm going to be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender, where the ads take aim and lay their claim to the heart and the soul of the spender, and believe in whatever may lie in those things that money can buy.” We cringe at these words and think they are so dystopian but it’s so true and we all know people, and perhaps they were ourselves, who settled for the materialistic things in life.
The meaning that this song conveys is so heavy and I firmly believe that it is one of the most honest, genuine, and brutally truthful songs that have ever been written.
