Boots of Chinese Plastic

Album: Break Up the Concrete (2008)
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Songfacts®:

  • The song's opening line contains four Buddhist words, "Nam myoho renge kyo." Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde told Rolling Stone when she first came across the phrase: "About 1971, this guy and I were hitchhiking through Canada. We thought we were John and Yoko. Somebody told us that if we got to Toronto, we should stay with this woman Georgia Ambrose, who held Buddhist ceremonies at her house. We called her and she said, 'What sign are you?' 'Well, we're both Virgos.' And she goes, 'Come over, I need some Virgo energy.' When we got there, that's what they were chanting. It means, basically, that every drop that goes to the vein comes back to the heart."
  • Break Up the Concrete was the first Pretenders album in six years. Most of the songs were written in the few years leading up to it, but Chrissie Hynde started this one about 30 years earlier.

Comments: 1

  • Mike from Austin, TxFor all you youngsters out there,
    The title is an obvious reference to Bob Dylan's "Boots of Spanish Leather"
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