September 23, 2022     —–     Chart #162

Hello Music Friends,

It’s time for another Chart of the Week. Today we go way back to 1966 with a chart topper from an influential British rock band. Sunny Afternoon is a song by the Kinks, written by chief songwriter Ray Davies. The track later featured on the Face to Face album as well as being the title track for their 1967 compilation album. Like its contemporary “Taxman” by the Beatles, the song references the high levels of progressive tax taken by the British Labor government of Harold Wilson. Its strong music hall flavor and lyrical focus was part of a stylistic departure for the band (begun with 1965’s “A Well Respected Man”), which had risen to fame in 1964–65 with a series of hard-driving, power-chord rock hits.

“Sunny Afternoon” was first written in Ray Davies’ house when he was sick. “I’d bought a white upright piano. I hadn’t written for a time. I’d been ill. I was living in a very 1960s-decorated house. It had orange walls and green furniture. My one-year-old daughter was crawling on the floor and I wrote the opening riff. I remember it vividly. I was wearing a polo-neck sweater.”

Davies said of the song’s lyrics, “The only way I could interpret how I felt was through a dusty, fallen aristocrat who had come from old money as opposed to the wealth I had created for myself.” In order to prevent the listener from sympathizing with the song’s protagonist, Davies said, “I turned him into a scoundrel who fought with his girlfriend after a night of drunkenness and cruelty.”

This is a fun song to play, I hope you give it a try. Share this blog with your friends and ask them to subscribe at www.songchart.space

For all you JB fans (count me in), here’s Jimmy Buffet: https://youtu.be/jJpfIGakwUI

Keep rockin my friends,

Stan Bradshaw