The Kinks

After two flops, the third single went to No. 1 in Britain. One torn amplifier changed the fate of an unknown band.

• The opening riff swings off the beat between two chords that ring thick and heavy with just two notes pressed (power chords). Listen closely in the first two bars to the deliberately torn, warped tone (distortion) that Dave created by running the razor-slashed Elpico amp into a Vox AC30.
• As the song goes on, the same riff moves up one step at a time (modulation). Compare the first verse with the entry into the chorus and you can hear the pitch climb like a staircase, building tension.
• The guitar solo midway through is closer to impulse than finesse. Played by Dave, this short, raw solo is often cited as one of the prototypes of hard rock and punk guitar.
• The drums on the single were played not by Avory but by session drummer Bobby Graham. It was a London recording produced by Shel Talmy, running barely over 2 minutes.

With royalties frozen by lawsuits, Ray twisted the lament of a ruined aristocrat into music-hall patter. A British No. 1 in the summer of 1966.

• The bass line stepping down one rung at a time alongside the piano intro is the backbone of the whole song. Follow Quaife's bass and you can clearly feel the harmonies sinking one after another.
• Ray's vocal is a first-person monologue drawn out like a yawn. The double tone that makes a fallen aristocrat's self-pity sound both earnest and ridiculous is the heart of the song.
• The slow, strolling beat and the air of old English theater songs (music hall) ran in exactly the opposite direction from the psychedelic hits of that same summer.
• The high backing harmonies layered into the chorus cast a strangely bright light over the drowsy monologue.

The first song Ray also produced. It is the song of a solitary observer looking down from a window at the sunset over the Thames and the crowds below.

• The descending guitar phrase of the intro carries an echoing, reverberant effect. That one brief sound sets the mood of the whole song, like evening light spreading across the river.
• The bass traces a second line moving in the opposite direction to the guitar melody (countermelody). Follow only the bass through the verses and you'll hear how intricately the song is built.
• Ray said the song was first conceived around a Liverpool sunset before moving to London. Rumors that the lovers in the song were a particular acting couple were denied by Ray.
• The backing chorus wraps the song in texture rather than spelling out words, a device that lets us hear the narrator's loneliness and the city's beauty at once.

It failed to chart in Britain on release but is now regarded as the band's signature work. Ray's sketchbook of England, set on preserving what is disappearing.

• Fifteen short songs of 2–3 minutes each follow one another like a collection of short stories. Instead of a single plot, scenes such as village landscapes, old friends, cats and steam trains are bound together by one mood (concept album).
• The video on this card, “Picture Book,” is a song that leafs through an old family photo album. Listen for the loneliness flowing beneath Avory's jaunty drums and bright handclaps.
• Session player Nicky Hopkins's keyboards and a keyboard instrument that makes flute and string sounds from recorded tape (Mellotron) tint the music here and there with the color of old photographs.
• The opening title track speaks like a manifesto, reeling off a list of things worth preserving. Ray's characteristic tone, half earnest and half playful, is the key to the whole album.

The song that put the band back on the world charts right after its return to American stages. Because of a single word, a cola brand, Ray had to cross the Atlantic mid-tour to re-record it.

• The bright, metallic ring of the intro's acoustic guitar is said to have come from layering a guitar with a metal resonator (Dobro) over an ordinary acoustic guitar.
• The narrator confides a night spent with someone met at a London club, in a 1st-person voice that mixes surprise and warmth. Its refusal to judge or mock was unusual for a hit of 1970.
• Because of BBC broadcasting rules, the one word naming a cola brand was replaced with another and re-recorded (overdubbed). Depending on the pressing, that single word sounds different, so the versions are worth comparing.
• The tempo shifts sharply as the slow introduction gives way to the fast chorus, and Dave's electric guitar holds up the bridge.

The closing track of Everybody's in Show-Biz, steeped in the weariness of touring. A wistful reflection that even the most dazzling stars end up as names on a sidewalk.

• At more than 6 minutes, it breathes very differently from the early Kinks, who built their name on short singles. Follow its unhurried, slowly mounting structure from beginning to end.
• John Gosling's piano anchors the song. The guitar steps back, content to decorate the space around the piano.
• The narrator walks the Hollywood Walk of Fame, calling to mind one by one the names of the stars set into the pavement. Ray's vocal begins in a tone closer to a quiet recitation than to singing, and swells with feeling as the song goes on.
• Toward the end, backing vocals and instruments are added one by one as the song builds. Live, it became a song the audience sings along to.

Born of memories of Rene, the older sister lost in 1957, and of a vanished neighborhood dance hall. Reaching No. 6 in the US, it became the band's last big hit.

• Jaunty, bouncing brass and a springy rhythm bring back the merriment of the old dance hall. It is a sound that clung to the spirit of the music hall in the middle of 1980s synth-pop.
• The narrator is a younger brother recalling the older sister who used to go to the dance hall. Listen with an ear for the sense of loss beneath the bright accompaniment, and the song sounds entirely different.
• Ray's vocal is close to a storyteller's speech. This manner of singing as if talking and talking as if singing is something he had been refining since the days of “Sunny Afternoon.”
• The music video, directed by Julien Temple, with Ray himself playing the man at the dance hall, reintroduced the band to a new generation of Americans through MTV.