Sunday Music - Waterloo Sunset

Today’s music video is Waterloo Sunset  from the English band The Kinks.

Link to Video at You Tube

This video was posted to You Tube by SexyMVids

The Kinks are one of the most influential bands to come out of what was called the ‘British Invasion’. Formed in 1964 at the pinnacle of English music, this wonderful band has a place in the Pantheon of music from that era. They covered a number of genres, the driving force being Ray Davies, and over that period, they had a large number of smash hits all around the Planet.

From the release of their their third record, You Really Got Me, they had a string of major hits through late 1964 and well into 1965, and it seemed that anything they released became a hit. From that first number One hot, they had that string of almost 15 songs that all went into the Top Five, and this included three that made it all the way to Number One.

This song featured today was released in 1967, and almost made it to Number One, finally settling for a few weeks at Number 2.

Ray Davies wanted his songs to reflect a form of narrative, and this song tells of a young couple, the River Thames, and Waterloo Station in London.

The melody actually seems simple, but is in fact quite complex, and even taking that into account, the final version was achieved in less than twelve hours of arranging and playing and then recording.

Davies wanted a different guitar sound from what was the current style, and he achieved this using a tape delay echo, a form of playing that had gone a little out of style, being first used in the 50′s.  It proved to be ‘something new’ even though an old technique, and a lot of bands at the time copied that technique.

This song still ranks inside the top 50 of Rolling Stone’s Greatest 500 hits, and is also regarded as the best song written specifically about London.

Over the years, this song has been covered by a number of artists, including some of the big name, Peter Gabriel, and even The Thin White Duke himself, David Bowie.

In this clip, which was probably lip synced, as were all the bis songs around that time, you see Ray Davies singing and playing an acoustic guitar, which was again a little different at the time, because he preferred to play an acoustic rather than an electric guitar. His brother Dave Davies plays lead guitar, and here he is shown with his trademark Gibson Flying Vee.

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Tagged: Music, Music Video, The Kinks

Posted in: Music, Videos