The Kinks lyric that Jackson Browne said was “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had to sing”
Having Jackson Browne praise your lyrics is akin to jogging past Eliud Kipchoge and hearing him compliment your form. After all, Browne supposedly wrote ‘These Days’ at the age of just 16. Yet, the song’s stirring mix of experiential wisdom and world-weariness, wrapped in an ethereal remembrance of things past, lends credence to one amusing pet theory: that it was actually penned by one of his parents, helping him out with some homework. This hypothetical lovelorn guardian, clearly navigating their own emotional turmoil, poured their troubles into the catharsis of a musical sigh, leaving us with the hauntingly mature anthem we know today.
Or perhaps Browne was just a genius old before his time. Nevertheless, that theory segues nicely to The Kinks; after all, they are the ultimate family band. “When you think through the history of Kinks music,” Dave Davies told Salon, “So much of it is drawn from that family. The characters! Though the names might be changed, the people we drew inspiration from were family. ‘Muswell Hillbillies’ and ‘Village Green’, it’s very family-oriented.”
Fittingly, two family members would also be at the core of the band’s opus (arguably, at least), ‘Waterloo Sunset’. Terry and Julie were seemingly lovers from Ray Davies’ inner circle of relatives, pursuing dreams amid the wistful motif of a train station. “The two characters in the song,” he told Mojo, “Are to do with the aspirations of my sisters’ generation, who grew up during the Second World War and missed out on the ’60s.” That air of opportunity rolling by with the equanimity of the dirty old Thames made the song a favourite to Paul Weller, Damon Albarn and no doubt thousands of others.
As it turns out, it is such a perfect song that even its apparent imperfections are transfigured towards greatness. As Ray explains: “Sometimes when you’re writing and you’re really on good form, you get into the frame of mind where you think, I can relate to any of these things. It’s something I learned at art school: let all the ideas flow out. But if you listen to the words without the music, it’s a different thing entirely. The lyrics could be better. But they dovetail with the music perfectly.”
This is something that Browne picked up on, too, when he performed the track alongside Ray for his collaboration album See My Friends. When reflecting on this in the book The Art of Noise: Conversations with Great Songwriters, he recalled Browne’s praise for one humble line: “He said, ‘I don’t need no friends?’ He said it twice. I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had to sing. It doesn’t make sense on the page but when you put it with the music…'”
This depth even came as a revelation to Ray. “I hadn’t thought about it that way,” he continues. “The melody takes the curse off the grammar fault. The choice of words, the way they’re pronounced, sometimes gives an emotion that’s unexpected. Don’t is the killer word because it’s not correct. Great lines are only great because of what precedes them, maybe sometimes when they happen after.”
Naturally, ‘Waterloo Sunset’ is a creative gem that perfectly captures The Kinks’ singular ability to combine catchy melodies with moving narratives. Its themes of love, escape, and the simple beauty of life are still as poignant now as they were when it was first published. For many others, it is more than just a song; it is a musical record of a particular moment in time; it’s the “most beautiful thing” ever written.
