JP, Chrissie And The Fairground Boys: Sass And Sugar

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JP, Chrissie and the Fairground Boys' "If You Let Me" captures the dangerous, exhilarating beginning of an unlikely relationship.

courtesy of the artist

JP, Chrissie and the Fairground Boys' "If You Let Me" captures the dangerous, exhilarating beginning of an unlikely relationship.

courtesy of the artist

JP Jones is a gutsy dude. In 2008, the Welsh musician had the chutzpah to approach The Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde at a party, where they bonded over a shared affection for fairgrounds. A few days later, Jones was bold enough to text-message the traveling musician, "All the fairground luck for your show tonight."

Soon, they were co-writing Fidelity!, an 11-song tale of an impossible romance between a younger man and an older woman — much like the musicians behind the album, with the roughly three-decade difference between them.

"If You Let Me" — inspired in part by the Swedish film Let the Right One In, about an ageless vampire and his human girlfriend — captures the dangerous, exhilarating beginning of that relationship. The song immediately plunges into a thumping beat, accompanied by the feverish wails of Jones, who kicks off this upbeat duet by daring Hynde to resist his charms. "If you don't want me to come in, you better lock this door," he sings in a gravelly tone charged with the electricity of newly found desire. "And if you don't want me to return, you better lock this door."

His partner responds in that trademark Chrissie Hynde voice — the perfect blend of sass and sugar. When the two of them come together and croon, "I'm gonna take on this world / I'm gonna make you love me," it's hard to escape the giddy feeling of new love and endless possibilities, consequences be damned.