Chrissie Hynde wants fans to watch The Pretenders concerts with their eyes, not their phones.
The frontwoman was so exasperated by the glow of faces behind smart phone screens at an October 26th concert at the Irish Village in Dubai that she ended the show after The Pretenders played for about 45 minutes.
"She said, 'If you keep using your phones, then I'm not singing and you can listen to use playing," one audience member told The National (AE). "And so she stopped singing and at the end of that particular song, she said, 'Well, take a f***ing picture of this' and she and the band walked off stage."
The Pretenders post "No Phone Zone" signs all over venues they play in an attempt to make it clear that the band does not appreciate smart phone use during their shows.
Despite those signs, and Hynde's warnings, many concertgoers later attacked Hynde and the band via social media for failing to give them their money's worth.
Hynde wrote in a post prior to the Dubai show that she can be "a bit of a bitch when it [comes] to camera phones." But she added in that same post that she's probably "not going to change anytime soon."
She has not publicly addressed leaving the stage at the Dubai show, and if she does, an apology seems unlikely.
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