The Pretenders - In the Middle of the Road

The Pretenders are an English-American rock band formed in Hereford, England in March 1978. The original band consisted of initiator and main songwriter Chrissie Hynde (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), James Honeyman-Scott (lead guitar, backing vocals, keyboards), Pete Farndon (bass guitar, backing vocals), and Martin Chambers (drums, backing vocals, percussion). The band has experienced drug-related deaths of the members, and numerous subsequent personnel changes have taken place over the years, with Hynde as the sole continual member.

In 1978, Hynde made a demo tape and gave it to Dave Hill, owner of the label Real Records. Hill stepped in to manage her career, and began by paying off the back rent owed on her rehearsal room in Covent Garden, London. Hill also advised Hynde to take her time and get a band together. In the spring of 1978, Hynde met Pete Farndon (bass guitar / vocals), and they selected a band consisting of James Honeyman-Scott (guitar / vocals / keyboards), and Martin Chambers (drums / vocals / percussion), put the name The Pretenders on the group, inspired by the song "The Great Pretender" by The Platters.

They recorded a demo tape (including "Precious", "The Wait" and a Kinks cover, "Stop Your Sobbing"), handed it to Hynde's friend Nick Lowe, produced a single ("Stop Your Sobbing/The Wait") and performed their first gigs in a club in Paris. The single was released in January 1979 and hit the Top 30 in UK. The band's early success was followed by their first gigs in Britain where they earned wide critical acclaim. Later that spring (1979), The Pretenders recorded their eponymous first album and hit the charts in UK and US with the song "Brass in Pocket". The band traded on the success of this first album (for Sire Records) for some time, as it wasn't released around the world until well into 1979 (some charts consider it the best album of 1980, for example).

"In the Middle of the Road" is a single that appears on The Pretenders' album Learning to Crawl. It is a song that has a 60s-style rhythm, and it peaked at #19 on the US pop singles chart and #2 on the US mainstream rock chart in January 1984, where it stayed for four weeks. The number is at least quasi-autobiographical, with writer and lead singer Chrissie Hynde exclaiming, I got a kid, I'm thirty-three, hey!