Waterloo Sunset

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Written by: Ray Davies
Produced by: Ray Davies
Released: Feb. '68 on Reprise
Charts: Did not chart

The Davies Brothers were in the middle of recording their band's fifth album, Something Else by the Kinks, when Ray played an early version of this delicate orchestral-pop ballad for Dave. "We started ad-libbing vocal parts around the chorus," Dave said. But Ray initially held off sharing his lyrics -- about a loner who "don't need no friends" -- with the rest of the band. "I was embarrassed by how personal [the lyrics] were," he wrote. "It was like an extract from a diary nobody was allowed to read."

Appears on: Something Else by the Kinks (Warner Bros.)

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