Songfacts®:

• "Stop Your Sobbing" was written by Ray Davies and recorded for his band The Kinks' 1964 self-titled debut album. Their version is a deep cut and wasn't released as a single, but Chrissie Hynde was familiar with it and covered it as the first single for her band the Pretenders in 1979. A year later, Hynde met Davies and they became a couple. They had a daughter together named Natalie in 1983, but split up about a year later.
• In order to convince guitarist James Honeyman-Scott to join the Pretenders, Chrissie Hynde hired one of his favorite recording artists, Nick Lowe, to produce this song.
• In his autobiography, Ray Davies writes of a girlfriend who may have been the subject of this song: "Her sobbing was making me feel guilty and I told her to stop... there was something so desperately lonely about her."
• The Pretenders covered another Ray Davies penned track a couple of years later, "I Go To Sleep," for another single release.