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Waterloo Sunset
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"Waterloo Sunset" is a song released as a single by The Kinks in 1967, and featured on their album Something Else by the Kinks. It was composed and produced by The Kinks lead singer and songwriter Ray Davies and is one of the band's best known and most acclaimed songs.
The lyrics are from the point of view of a solitary man on the south bank of the Thames watching (or imagining) the romantic encounters of a couple at Waterloo Underground, then crossing Waterloo Bridge.
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Encyclopedia
"Waterloo Sunset" is a song released as a single by The Kinks in 1967, and featured on their album Something Else by the Kinks. It was composed and produced by The Kinks lead singer and songwriter Ray Davies and is one of the band's best known and most acclaimed songs.
The lyrics are from the point of view of a solitary man on the south bank of the Thames watching (or imagining) the romantic encounters of a couple at Waterloo Underground, then crossing Waterloo Bridge. Davies, in his 1996 autobiography X-Ray, says the inspiration for the song came from an incident when he was hospitalized as a boy. On the BBC radio show The Davies Diaries, Davies stated that "I can't tell you who they are because they're good friends of mine". In a 2008 interview with Spinner Magazine, Davies stated "it was a fantasy about my sister going off with her boyfriend to a new world and they were going to emigrate and go to another country."
The couple - "Terry" and "Julie" - mentioned in the lyrics are widely reported and presumed as being British film stars of the time Terence Stamp and Julie Christie but Davies, in a 2004 interview, denied this, saying: "No, Terry and Julie were real people. I couldn't write for stars."
The recording features Davies' first wife Rasa on background vocals. “When the record was finished and it was coming out", Ray Davies remembered, “I got my wife Rasa to drive me down to Waterloo Bridge to see if the atmosphere was right… I’ve never worked with a song that has been a total pleasure from beginning to end like that one”.
The record reached number 2 on the British charts in mid 1967 (it failed to dislodge the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" from the number 1 position). Davies considered the song a professional milestone, where he managed to blend the commercial demands of a hit single with his own highly personal style of narrative songwriting. The elaborate production was the first Kinks recording produced solely by Davies, without longtime producer Shel Talmy. In subsequent arguments with Kinks management over the direction of the band, Davies would say "I've done 'Waterloo Sunset', now I want to do something else".
A London FM radio poll in 2004 named this the "Greatest Song About London", while Time Out named it the "Anthem of London".
It holds spot #42 on List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Paul Weller and Damon Albarn cite the song as their favourite of all-time.
Ray Davies included the song in his live set at Camden's The Roundhouse for the BBC Electric Proms in October 2007, featuring the Crouch End Festival Chorus.
Influential pop music journalist Robert Christgau has called the song "the most beautiful song in the English language." Pete Townshend of The Who has called it "divine" and "a masterpiece". Allmusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine concurred, citing it as "possibly the most beautiful song of the rock and roll era."
Covers
- The song was covered by Cathy Dennis for the album Am I The Kinda Girl (1996). It was released as a single and reached number 11 in the UK charts. The video featured Cathy in a black taxi cab driving through North London showing from time to time the back of the cab driver's head. At the end of the song, the driver turns round and turns out to be Ray Davies.
- David Bowie recorded a cover of the song during the sessions for his 2003 album Reality. The song was the bonus track of the special 2 disc (silver cover) limited edition of the album. Bowie and Davies duetted the song at the Tibet House Benefit gig at Carnegie Hall, New York City on February 28, 2003.
- Damon Albarn (of Blur) and Ray Davies performed the song together on the Channel 4 TV show The White Room in 1995. It was available on The White Room Album given away with an issue of Q, and has subsequently found its way onto the internet as an MP3, sometimes mislabelled as being by Blur.
- Def Leppard covered the song and released it on their album Best of Def Leppard in 2004. It also appeared on the Def Leppard album Yeah! in 2006.
- Waterloo Sunset is also the title of an album by Barb Jungr, which features a version of the Kinks song.
- Also covered by German "Kölsch-Rock"-Band BAP for a live performance since leadsinger Wolfgang Niedecken is an avowed Kinks fan and BAP played a concert with The Kinks as a support-act. The track is also featured in the BAP movie "Viel passiert", directed by Wim Wenders.
- The song was covered by Fastbacks on the Kinks cover album Give the People What We Want from the Sub Pop label.
- The song was covered live on several occasions by the late singer-songwriter Elliott Smith.
- The band Islands occasionally perform a cover of this song live.
- Also covered by the indie rock band, The Village Green.
- The song was covered by the band Scrabbel on their album 1909.
- Polish Band Elektryczne Gitary recorded this song with polish lyrics as "Stacja Wilanowska". Polish lyrics are about Warsaw Metro station, Wilanowska
Kinks Links
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