Do we really need a reason to celebrate the genius of The Kinks? If you need a peg for us to hang this list on, there are plenty to choose from. The British pop band’s unassailable masterpiece Village Green Preservation Society was released 55 years ago this coming November. 50 years ago saw the band drop Preservation Act 1, an album that was ignored in its time but has come to be appreciated by fans of the group for its attempt to fuse theatrical pomp with rock bombast. And 40 years ago, the Kinks released State of Confusion, the record that gave them one of their greatest commercial successes in the U.S. (see #9 on this list). All of this is just to say, we think it’s high-time we pick 20 greatest Kinks songs ever.
In reality, there’s never a bad time to crow about what Ray Davies and his younger brother Dave produced during their 30 years making music together. The former quickly moved from aping the tone of the R&B and pop songs that inspired him into musical territory that took a side-eye look at British culture. In his work, he celebrated it and derided it with equal parts poetry and scathing wit. When he turned his lyrical on the music industry that buoyed he and his band to the top of the charts around the world, he could be just as bitter and just as thankful for his good fortune. Looking inward at his life and that of his family, the scales would fall from his eyes and the poignancy and clarity of his words would ring loudly. As for Dave Davies, he launched a thousand garage bands through one fuzzed out riff on our #5 song and spent the rest of his life wielding his guitar like a cudgel or a shepherd’s staff, applying force as necessary. And when he did take a turn writing a song for the band, his words would devastate. Not for nothing did he land two tracks in our top 10.
Narrowing this list down to simply 20 tracks wasn’t an easy task for the Paste team. Even looking at it now before hitting publish, I started to fret about the songs that didn’t make the cut. (Did we really leave off “Nothin’ In This World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ‘Bout That Girl”? Was there really no room for “Victoria” or “Big Sky”?) That is the beauty of a band with a catalog as varied and wonderful as the Kinks. We could stretch this list on for 100 entries and not get tired. For the time being, let’s just stick to these 20 and let the debate about what did and didn’t make the cut begin. —Robert Ham, Associate Music Editor
20. “Destroyer” (Give the People What They Want, 1981)
The albums that arrived during Kinks’ so-called “arena rock” era—that post-1977 period when the band was finally allowed to tour America and did so with regularity, becoming a white hot live act in the process—aren’t necessarily the favorites of the group’s fans. Yet every now and again, those records could yield little masterpieces like this gem from an otherwise uninspiring collection. Its genius lay in Ray Davies’ knowing callbacks to the hits of his recent past, as its propelled forward by the guitar riff from “All Day and All of the Night,” and the song’s protagonist has found himself freaking out following a tryst with Lola. After years of living under the media’s glare and keeping himself aloft with a steady diet of amphetamines, is it any wonder Ray Davies is feeling a little paranoid about hidden cameras and little green men in his head? —Robert Ham
19. “Till The End of the Day” (The Kink Kontroversy, 1965)
The Kinks made power chords their hallmark, and few songs in their canon rip as volcanically as “Till the End of the Day”—a bluesy, roaring pastiche of face-melting rock ‘n’ roll. The Kinks would begin pivoting towards poppier sounds after The Kink Kontroversy came out, but there’s no denying the steadfast catchiness and heaviness of “Till the End of the Day.” It didn’t chart nearly as high as the band’s other big hitters from the era, but that doesn’t negate its greatness one bit. You can hear slight remnants of “All of the Day and All of the Night” in here, in those guitar riffs, but “Till the End of the Day” is where the Kinks break away from their propulsions to recreate and bend the same beat and melody structure into slightly different variations of one song. It’s a grand turn for the Brits. —MM
18. “Berkeley Mews” (B-side, 1970)
Recorded during the sessions for Village Green, but held back until it snuck out as the b-side for Top 10 hit “Lola,” this music hall-inspired number was dismissed by critics at the time as being nothing more than a novelty from Ray Davies. Look beyond the crooned verses and the barrelhouse piano, however, and there’s a brutal little power pop gem hanging out underneath, nursing a champagne hangover and a world of regret after a one-night stand that he hoped might have yielded something more meaningful. At the time of its creation, it felt like something of an outlier amid the pastoral pop of Village Green, but the song was really a portend of things to come for the Kinks as their approach to rock became more muscular and angular. —RH
17. “Days” (1968)
Though Ray Davies wrote “Days” as a goodbye to his sister Rosie, who moved away to Australia, it also serves as an early farewell to his time with The Kinks, even though the band would continue for a several more tumultuous years. The lyrics reflect a bittersweet sadness balancing a sense of loss with an appreciation for all the time together. “Days” features Mellotron and piano from the legendary Nicky Hopkins, adding an air of baroque-pop that colored many of their late-’60s recordings. The song was a minor comeback hit for the band, released only as a single in the UK and as part of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society in the rest of Europe. —Josh Jackson
16. “Tired of Waiting For You” (Kinda Kinks, 1965)
For a song written in one afternoon, “Tired of Waiting For You” is as catchy as ever. The A-side lead single from The Kinks’ second album, Kinda Kinks, is the poppy follow-up to “You Really Got Me.” It’s a simple song about the frustrations of unrequited love, but the distorted bluesy riffs, combined with the melodic sway of Ray Davies’s vocals, led to it being The Kinks’ second chart-topper. Davies’s ability to break down “I’m so tired / Tired of waiting / Tired of waiting for you” into three separate thoughts is an artful mastering of the simple ‘60s earworm. It’s a deviation from the rose-tinted romance music of devotion and longing that were so prominent at the time, and maybe The Kinks knew how to tap into the people’s underlying bitterness about love, or maybe Davies’s was just bitter himself. Either way, this swinging single kept The Kinks on the road to becoming icons of The British Invasion. —Olivia Abercrombie
15. “Autumn Almanac” (1967)
Released in that brief interregnum between Something Else and Village Green, this single didn’t make even the smallest dent in the U.S. charts. But in their native U.K., “Autumn Almanac” was a smash that presaged the poppier bent of their work to come and offered up a portrait of life in Muswell Hill shaded by touches of darkness that went on to inspire equally multi-layered portraits of the suburbs like “Aqualung,” “Respectable Street” and “Parklife.” The narrator of this song (apparently inspired by a gardener in Ray Davies’ childhood neighborhood) may seem to be enjoying his football on Saturday and “roast beef on Sundays,” but the poignancy takes on a stinging feeling in the lines, “All the people I meet / seem to come from my street / and I can’t get away.” The jaunty music can’t hide the chill in those words. —RH
14. “Supersonic Rocket Ship” (Everybody’s in Show-Biz, 1972)
The best song from the Kinks’ most underrated record, “Supersonic Rocket Ship” is novel and theatrical. Everybody’s in Show-Biz marked the band’s—namely Ray’s—pivot towards campy, vaudeville-inspired rock ‘n’ roll, especially through the lens of a rock star’s life and the mundane fits of going on tour. “Supersonic Rocket Ship” is, in Dave’s own words, optimistic and sarcastic. The dichotomy of hope and dysfunction and fantasy sets it apart from so much of the Kinks’ catalog. Ray’s writing here is stupendous and wide-open, as he sings of refuge and paradise for all, not just some. “On my supersonic rocket ship, nobody has to be hip, nobody needs to be out of sight,” he sings. “Nobody’s gonna travel second class, there’ll be equality and no suppression of minorities.” With a horn section from trumpeter Mike Cotton and trombonist and tuba player John Beecham—along with Ray’s distinctive, punctuated acoustic guitar paired with Dave’s lead—“Supersonic Rocket Ship” is one of the Kinks’ most ambitious, colorful and catchy songs they ever concocted. —Matt Mitchell
13. “Where Have All the Good Times Gone” (The Kink Kontroversy, 1965)
My favorite part of “Where Have All the Good Times Gone” is how, if you removed the chorus, it would have fit quite nicely on Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited. The song, though, as it sits on The Kink Kontroversy, is one of the Kinks’ most underrated composition—and it positively rips beyond comprehension. A proto-garage rock masterpiece, “Where Have All the Good Times Gone” is raunchy, raucous and heavy as all get-out. Sure, Van Halen covered it on Diver Down in 1982 and their version would chart, but the Kinks’ OG rendition is the pinnacle—and it’s eons better than its A-side “Till the End of the Day,” and I’ll never let Pye/Reprise off the hook for making “Where Have All the Good Times Gone” a B-side. The track also became underrated by the Kinks themselves, as the band didn’t make it a live show staple until the 1970s. As songs about despair go, “Where Have All the Good Times Gone” is among the very best. —MM
12. “A Well Respected Man” (Kwyet Kinks, 1965)
“A Well Respected Man” is a work of divine inexplicability. Even now, 58 years after it came out, I cannot put my finger on what exactly makes it such a perfect pop rock song. Conceived as a jab at the condescension and self-gravitas of the uppity elite by Ray, “A Well Respected Man” is the best-sounding roast to come out of the British Invasion—as he disses every finesse and ego in sight, even throwing a couple of shoves at the “man” in question’s parents, too. “And he likes his own backyard, and he likes his fags the best,” Ray sings. “‘Cause he’s better than the rest, and his own sweat smells the best. And he hopes to grab his father’s loot, when pater passes on. ‘‘Cause he’s oh, so good and he’s oh, so fine.” It’s equally hard to ignore the buoyant catchiness of the track, as its jangly tone—spearheaded by the duet of Ray’s piercing acoustic guitar and Dave’s shiny, subdued electric—is a gorgeous earworm. —MM
11. “Picture Book” (The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society, 1968)
“Picture Book” is a song that is sometimes silly, sometimes heart-wrenchingly vulnerable, but always affecting, and memorable as a quintessentially Kinks track. The contrast between Davies’s gritty, raw vocals and the 12-string acoustic guitar melody creates a near perfect marriage of the Kinks’ early proto-punk tendencies and later experimental world building. Village Green Preservation Society is an exercise in that very world building, and “Picture Book” continues to cement its legacy as one of the more tender moments in the band’s universe. —Madelyn Dawson
10. “Sunny Afternoon” (Face to Face, 1966)
“Sunny Afternoon” emerged in the band’s effort to shift their sound away from the simpler, power chord-dominated arrangements that had colored most of their success in the earlier years of the ’60s. It’s a lament against the progressive tax that Prime Minister Harold Wilson imposed on England. It, along with “A Well Respected Man,” signaled a shift in sound for the Kinks, as they began leaning into their own pop eccentricities. What we get is as an indolent tune, replete with sweet harmonies and jangling key melodies. The lyrics underscore the track with some of the Kinks’ signature satirical wit, with Ray Davies singing “The tax man’s taken all my dough / And left me in my stately home.” The experiments on this track were more than successful, scoring the band their third #1 hit, as well as opening the door for their stuff to get a lot weirder. —MD
9. “Come Dancing” (State of Confusion, 1983)
The impact of MTV on the commercial prospects of artists old and new is common knowledge at this point, but if you want to get a small taste of just how powerful the network was, look no further than the story of “Come Dancing,” the first single from State of Confusion. Clive Davis, the head of the Kinks’ label Arista Records, was convinced that the song was far too British to matter to us dumb Americans. Maybe so, but pairing the song with a glitzy music video directed by Julien Temple-helmed “Come Dancing” become a pop smash, matching the group’s best chart showing in the States. While the kids of the ’80s may not have truly grokked Ray Davies’ romantic memories of the big bands playing at the local dance hall, there was no denying how catchy the song was nor the pathos of watching his sister shed tears when her beloved Palais was torn down. The truth of the song only makes its memories that much more emotional, as Davies wrote it as an ode to his elder sister who gifted a guitar to young Ray mere hours before she died of a heart attack dancing in a ballroom. The tune was also Davies’ attempt to get back to the mood of the music he had some 20 years earlier after a long while of writing material suited to hit the rafters at the arenas and concert halls the Kinks were playing at the time. Ironically, it only made the band more successful, forcing them to turn the song into a rousing rocker for their live sets. As all the best songs do, “Come Dancing” lost none of its passion in the translation. —RH
8. “Shangri-La” (Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), 1969)
The Kinks’ Dave Davies had this to say about his group’s 1969 album Arthur, “It was a true conceptual piece, and English people just didn’t want to know.” True or not, one could somewhat understand the reticence of the Brits toward an album that poked with playfulness and touches of malice at the country’s struggles following World War II and the decision by many to seek their financial security elsewhere. By the time “Shangri-La” arrived on the album, the titular Arthur (inspired by Davies’ brother-in-law) had emigrated to Australia and was living in a planned community with his family. But the bitter irony of the move has begun to weigh on poor Arthur’s slender shoulders as he realizes all the problems and the conformity of suburban life in England has followed he and his family Down Under. “Too scared to think about how insecure you are,” Davies’ sings toward the end of the song, “Life ain’t so happy in your little Shangri-La.”
Writ large, it’s the same story as expressed through novels like Reservation Road or films like American Beauty. It’s the common malaise of the common human as they try to adapt to being one of, as Stephen Falk calls them in You’re The Worst, the sweater people. Is it any wonder that the British populace stayed away from this song and Arthur. Rock was supposed to be about escapism, right? Leave it then to the future generations of British songwriters like Paul Weller and Damon Albarn who understood exactly what Davies and the band were expressing on this song and this album, and used it as a foundation for their own empathetic yet pointed criticisms of everyday life in the island nation. —RH
7. “Death of a Clown” (Something Else by the Kinks, 1967)
At a post-show party one night, Dave Davies, exhausted by the brutal schedule he and the Kinks were trying to maintain at the time, fell asleep briefly. When startling himself awake, he “saw all these decadent people running around,” as he told journalist Jon Weiderhorn in 2015. “I thought, ‘What are we doing?’ We were going from day to day to day like performing seals.” What came out of that stark realization was a song, co-written by Dave and his brother Ray and originally released as a solo single in 1967 before being appended to the Kinks’ album Something Else.
The music hall roots of “Clown” are undeniable, something all British pop artists at the time couldn’t rip out of their DNA, but here it is being used less for a nostalgic pull or irony and more to drive the home the song’s allegorical lyrics of a sickly circus at the end of its days. At the center of it sits a clown, makeup cracking on his drooping face as he takes many, many pulls from the bottles of booze at his side. You may balk at feeling any modicum of sympathy for a wealthy rock star bemoaning their fate even in this metaphorical fashion, but the bone-deep exhaustion and pitiful clamoring for some shred of relief can easily be applied to anyone pushing 50+ hours a week yet still barely scraping by. Little wonder then that the song resonated so deeply with the band’s British fans that it shot into the charts, landing at #3, and remains one of the group’s most beloved. Unless you’ve lived a life of absolute privilege, we’ve all been that clown at one point or another in our lives. —RH
6. “Village Green Preservation Society” (The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, 1968)
The title track from the Kinks’ best record is baroque and psychedelic and wildly gorgeous. Often considered their own response to Sgt. Pepper’s and Pet Sounds, Village Green Preservation Society stands on its own as this larger-than-life token of ambition for the third most-beloved British Invasion band. It’s hard to knack a band like the Kinks for trying to stake their claim in making a dense and mesmerizing slice of rock ‘n’ roll; you can’t deny that, on its best days, Village Green Preservation Society is better than the other two aforementioned masterpieces. The title track alone, in all of its buoyant, hypnotic and kaleidoscopic wonder, cements that truth. The ongoing “God save” thematic proclamations of the song, from Donald Duck to Fu Manchu to tudor houses and billiards, is cheeky and striking—and, like the rest of the record, poignantly based on Ray and Dave’s childhood memories in Fortis Green. “Village Green Preservation Society” holds some of the most celestial backing harmonies on a rock song across the entire 1960s, and the track transcends its own legacy 55 years later. —MM
5. “You Really Got Me” (Kinks, 1964)
Who would have thought that a song by a group rooted in the pop rock of the ‘60s would signal the precipice of the ‘70s punk movement. The Kinks were trendsetters, and “You Really Got Me” set the standard for their looming fame. The third single off the UK band’s debut is a swirling mix of bouncing keys, shaky tambourines, biting riffs and Ray Davies’s vocals dripping with attitude. “You Really Got Me” was recorded twice before gracing the public’s ears, with the first iteration being a more jazzy rendition and the second — the one that propelled them to international acclaim — being the power chord-driven track that defined The Kinks as a band and the future of punk and garage rock. The band was told to follow The Beatles’ blueprint to sell records, but the lusty lyrics weren’t made for commercial success; in the words of Dave Davies, it was “a love song for street kids.” This act of rebellion turned out to be the perfect move for the band, complete with edginess and an original sound. It is no wonder why “You Really Got Me” continues to endure with a presence in modern rock. Who knows what would have happened if the group stuck with the jazzy tone of the original? I, for one, am grateful they didn’t. —OA
4. “Lola” (Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One, 1970)
No song in rock history has been swarmed by a more diverse spectrum of controversy than the Kinks’ “Lola.” Not only was the track banned by several radio stations Australia for its “controversial subject matter”—aka being a minimally positive song about a trans woman—it was banned by the BBC for containing “Coca-Cola” in the lyrics, because the organization had a strict policy against product placement. Can you believe that Ray had to fly from NYC to London in the middle of the Kinks’ US tour just to change the words to “cherry cola”? CREEM wrote that “Lola” was “the first significantly blatant gay-rock ballad,” recognizing its queer importance in a genre of music that was, like much of the entire world, not very public-facing in its own pride. “Lola,” like Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” is not a resourceful portrait of a trans character, though—if it was, the story would be told from Lola’s perspective, not from that of a lyricist who leans into catchy euphemisms, transmisogyny and can’t fathom the titular woman as anything more than an object of sexual and romantic desire.
What makes “Lola” an important song, however, is that it was groundbreaking at some point in history. While the lyrics are tone deaf in retrospect, for 1970 they nearly obliterated the boundary. And the fact that it went over the heads of many disc jockeys across the globe, topping the charts in five countries and peaking at #9 in the US, #2 in the UK, #2 in Australia and #2 in Sweden. We’ve seen movies and TV parody the story of “Lola” to a nauseating, violent extent (looking directly at you, The Hangover Part II) over the years but, for the Vietnam era, the song’s existence was a risk and the song’s success was monumental. Not to mention, it features Dave Davies greatest guitar performance across his entire time with the Kinks. “Lola” has a messy legacy, but its place in the band’s existence is firmly set in stone. —MM
3. “All Day and All of the Night” (Kinksize Hits, 1965)
Brash, fuzzed-out and endlessly danceable, “All Day and All of the Night” boasts one of the most recognizable riffs––not just in the Kinks’ catalogue, but of all time. Released to follow their earlier success “You Really Got Me,” “All Day and All of the Night” sees the band continue to lean into their garage roots. Sure, the track was famously an influence on the Doors’ “Hello I Love You,” but they certainly were not the only ones paying attention. Ray Davies called “All Day and All of the Night” a “neurotic song, youthful, obsessive and sexually possessive.” Its rawness not only holds up over half a century later, it takes on a new importance with every passing year. In 1964, the Kinks did what no one else dared to do; still, in 2023, no one has done it with nearly as much eruptive potency. Done up in a similar beat and structure as “You Really Got Me,” “All Day and All of the Night” is an epic rendering of how one power chord riff can send an entire band into the stratosphere. —MD
2. “Waterloo Sunset” (Something Else by the Kinks, 1967)
If Sgt. Pepper was an answer to Pet Sounds, “Waterloo Sunset” was a reminder that The Kinks could create a layered pop masterpiece of their own with a melody as catchy as the Fab Four and backing harmonies worthy of The Beach Boys. The song about two young lovers is as sweet and optimistic as anything in their catalog and was once described by Robert Christgau as “the most beautiful song in the English language.” While that may be overstatement, it’s an undeniably lovely song that has endured as possibly their most enduring hit in their homeland. —JJ
1. “Strangers” (Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Pt. 1, 1970)
Dave Davies got a chance to speak his lyrical piece sparingly within the Kinks. Not terribly surprising when older brother Ray, arguably the strongest songwriter to emerge from the so-called British Invasion, was around. But when the younger Davies did step into the spotlight, he didn’t waste this chance with false sentiments or useless bromides. He cut straight to the heart of the matter with the force of a well-thrown dart. And he never hit the mark as true as he did with “Strangers.” Responding to his brother’s album concept about a young rock ‘n’ roller being courted and then abused by the music industry, Dave Davies was inspired to look back at his own beginnings as a fledgling artist, homing in on a friend that he was supposed to start a band with. Instead, that young man got deeper into a drug addiction that would eventually take his life. Davis subsumes this ballad with the pain of that loss and the regret that his own ambitions were able to find purchase while his friend’s slipped by unfulfilled. “It was like, what might have been if he hadn’t died so tragically,” he told an interviewer in 2010. The trick of this song, if we can call it that, is that “Strangers” isn’t so much a lament as a righteous shout from this side of existence to the afterlife, with Davies promising not to squander the chance he has been given. “All the things I own, I will share with you,” he insists at one point. “We’ll take what we want and give the rest away.” Davies wasn’t about to waste the talents he had been blessed with, and even five decades later, he has held true to that. There’s a lesson in there for us all —RH
Enjoy a playlist of the 20 greatest Kinks songs as chosen by the Paste music team below.