5. Chrissie Hynde
5. Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders. My family listened to music and sang all the time. There were seven kids and two parents who all loved music. We had our individual tastes and fads (lots of WPLJ, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Reggae, Elton John, Pink Floyd, U2, Anne Murray) but we also shared current music (my mom always loved popular music of the time), old time music (which we sang to together around the fire), movie soundtrack music (Coal Miner's Daughter, Blues Brothers) and Broadway show tunes (that's mainly my dad). There was always music happening in our home. My brother Tom played the guitar and my sister Patty played the piano. Erin played the violin, as did I for a short while. But my real love was standing in front of the mirror with a rolled up poster in my hand singing my heart out to whatever (mostly female) singer I was hearing around the house and who I wanted to sing like.I knew every single word to every song on Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and loved hearing myself sing them. I felt equally at home in all the songs, but loved Christine McVie's more sort of plaintive voice..."I'm over my head... but it sure feels nice." I would also sometimes perform for my parents, coming down from the third floor with one of my song books - Stevie Nicks, even Billy Joel for awhile - and singing to them at the foot of their bed, showing them the songs I had learned. I knew I didn't have a great voice, but I knew that I felt it from the heart and that there was something to that, that I could convey something through that. That sense took me away and gave me solace in those particular difficult years of transition through early adolescence. I didn't sing because I wanted to do anything with it, I sang because I needed to sing.In June 1980, Sylvia Hirschkind, the next door neighbor who's kids I babysat for, gave me my first ever full album for my 14th birthday. I had a lot of singles, but had never bought an album, I guess because I listened to a lot of what my family listened to and only bought the 45's to particular songs I loved.Anyway, Sylvia gave me a Sean Cassidy record as a birthday present, figuring I'm sure, that any 14 year old girl would love Sean Cassidy. I definitely didn't. I don't know if I thought of it myself or if one of my siblings told me, but I figured out I could take this record down to the record store and exchange it for something else. For the first full album of my teen years, of my own choosing.I bought The Pretenders first album and did just what I had done with Fleetwood Mac and so many others before them, and learned every word of every song. (Well, not every word - remember this was before the internet... Brass in Pocket anyone? Precious? Regardless...) I would play that record over and over, with my rolled up poster, in front of my mirror, but now I was singing, and feeling, differently.At 14, I first began to feel that sense of empowerment that comes with using your voice, using your gifts, even when you know you are not the best, and dreaming about who you could become if you just put yourself out there.Chrissie Hynde was different than the other singers I emulated. She was tough and cool and also didn't have a "great" voice but she conveyed something real from the heart. Somehow, through Chrissie Hynde, I believed I could be in a band. That this was a dream that was accessible to me. That any creative dream was accessible to me. I didn't have to be the best, I just had to be real. And that would mean something. I have found that to be true in everything I have done since.