Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert with tags pat benatar, neil giraldo, we live for love, we belong, promises in the dark, npr music, tiny desk concert, npr (radio network), concert (tv genre), live, spyder

"You know I wrote this for you, baby — you know that." "Oh, yeah, sure.”

Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo do mock-bickering as well as any long-married couple – which, of course, is exactly what they are. More notably, they've formed a commercial and creative juggernaut spanning more than three decades, with the Brooklyn-born Benatar singing and Giraldo working as her guitarist, producer and fellow songwriter.

Benatar's recording career spans a dozen studio albums, seven of which have sold more than a million copies, and has yielded multiple Grammy Awards and some remarkably sturdy staples of the classic-rock canon. Though most widely associated with a string of chart-toppers in the late '70s through the '80s — "Love Is A Battlefield," "Heartbreaker," et al — Benatar and Giraldo still draw huge crowds, for reasons made abundantly clear here. Classically trained as a mezzo-soprano, Benatar still possesses a formidable instrument, and the pair's songs have lost none of their appeal in the intervening decades. And, of course, the duo performs with an agreeable mixture of lighthearted banter, chops and charm.

At the Tiny Desk, Benatar and Giraldo ran through three of their classic songs: 1979's "We Live For Love," 1984's "We Belong" and, after a long and satisfying windup, 1981's "Promises In The Dark.” -- STEPHEN THOMPSON

Set List

"We Live For Love"

"We Belong"

"Promises In The Dark"

Credits

Producers: Bob Boilen, Maggie Starbard, Kevin Wait; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Colin Marshall, Maggie Starbard; Assistant Producer: Susan Hale Thomas; Photo by Susan Hale Thomas/NPR