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Ray Davies

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Ray Davies is an English singer and songwriter, born in 1944 in Muswell Hill in north London. Together with his brother Dave he founded The Kinks in the early 1960s, the band of which he became the singer and chief writer. The group broke through in 1964 with You Really Got Me, a song with a raw, distorted guitar sound that anticipated much later rock and punk.

Music and breakthrough

Davies then increasingly wrote songs that were not about love in general but about ordinary English life. Waterloo Sunset from 1967 looks at two people and the river in London, and the 1968 album The Village Green Preservation Society sings of village customs and vanishing things. In 1970 came Lola, a hit about an encounter in a club in Soho. His songs often have characters and small stories, sometimes with a smile and sometimes with a sharp edge.

Influence

Davies was regarded as one of the first writers to make everyday British life a subject for pop music. In School of Rock he is the example that Blur later followed, when that band wrote songs about characters and situations from contemporary England. Incidentally, the name Ray Davies should not be confused with that of the trumpeter of the same name from the British studio circuit.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to Waterloo Sunset and notice the soft, swaying melody and the images in the lyrics, in which the singer looks at other people from his window. What kind of story does this song tell?

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

Categories: Artists