The Pretender

Browne composed it in several places: in Los Angeles, in a rented store-front in North Hollywood and in a tacky hotel in Hawaii. He said it was almost finished before he found the opening piano riff. Asked who the Pretender is, he said it is not him exactly, but that there is a bit of the Pretender in him, and that it is anybody who has lost sight of some of their dreams. Craig Doerge plays piano, Jeff Porcaro drums, Bob Glaub bass and Fred Tackett acoustic and electric guitar, with David Crosby and Graham Nash on harmony vocals and strings arranged by David Campbell.

It reached number 58 on the Hot 100 in 1977 and spent five weeks on the chart, but it gained airplay on album-oriented radio. Billboard praised its "richly complex lyric and a sweeping melodic structure," and William Ruhlmann called it "a cynical, sarcastic treatise on moneygrubbing and the shallow life of the suburbs." It was used in the 1995 film Mr. Holland's Opus, and Lucinda Williams performed it on the 2014 tribute album Looking Into You.