Everybody who knows anything about the great English bandThe Kinks probably know this beautiful song taken from the album Something else about the Kinks. You know this song never reached no. 1 in the charts? Beatlemania was all over the place at that time which, in my opinion, makes this the greatest song ever made not to reach number one.

I’ve heard/read many stories regarding the lyrical content of the song from friends of the writer to a celebrity couple but for me the reason I like this song is that it reminds me of a place in our lives where we all feel safe from the world and comfortable as in these couple of lines of the first and second verses respectively:

‘but I don’t need no friends
as long as I gaze on waterloo sunset
I am in paradise‘

and

‘but I don’t feel afraid
as long as I gaze on waterloo sunset
I am in paradise‘

The first verse is very specific to the writers location (Ray Davies if you didn’t know) and describes waterloo sunset in London but can easily be interpreted to describe our own idyllic location while the second and third verses describe Terry and Julie and what they’re up to which to me is really just telling the story of two people getting on with their lives and doing what they got to do but he doesn’t mind because he’s happy where he is. This is truly a beautiful song, you can see a live version of the song here

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 5:00 am and is filed under Pop, Retro Classics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.