滑铁卢的日落 (1967)

"Waterloo Sunset" is a song by the English rock band the Kinks. It was released as a single on 5 May 1967 and featured on the album Something Else by the Kinks in September that year. Written and produced by Kinks frontman Ray Davies, "Waterloo Sunset" is one of the band's best-known and most acclaimed songs, and was ranked number 14 on the 2021 edition of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. It was also their first single that was available in true stereo.

"Waterloo Sunset" reached number 2 on the British charts in mid-1967. It was a top 10 hit in Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe. While also released as a single in North America, it failed to chart there.

History

Interviewed in May 1967, Ray Davies stated that he wrote "Waterloo Sunset" having had "the actual melody line in my head for two or three years". He initially titled the song "Liverpool Sunset", but scrapped the Liverpool theme after the release of the Beatles' song "Penny Lane".

The lyrics describe a solitary narrator watching (or imagining) two lovers passing over a bridge, reflecting on the couple, the River Thames, and Waterloo station. Speaking in 2010, Davies commented: "I didn't think to make it about Waterloo, initially, but I realised the place was so very significant in my life. I was in St Thomas' Hospital when I was really ill [when he had a tracheotomy aged 13] and the nurses would wheel me out on the balcony to look at the river. It was also about being taken down to the 1951 Festival of Britain. It's about the two characters – and the aspirations of my sisters' generation who grew up during the Second World War. It's about the world I wanted them to have. That, and then walking by the Thames with my first wife and all the dreams that we had." The two lovers in the lyric are named as Terry and Julie.

Interviewed in May 1967, Davies stated that "if you look at the song as a kind of film, I suppose Terry would be Terence Stamp and Julie would be Julie Christie", referring to the popular British film actors romantically linked at the time. Latterly, Davies has refuted this connection; in 2008, he described the song as "a fantasy about my sister going off with her boyfriend to a new world", referring to Rosy Davies, who moved to Australia in 1964.

The song was the first Kinks recording produced solely by Ray Davies, without longtime producer Shel Talmy; Talmy's contract with the band had expired in spring 1967. Because of its complex arrangement, the sessions for "Waterloo Sunset" lasted ten hours. Dave Davies later commented on the recording: "We spent a lot of time trying to get a different guitar sound, to get a more unique feel for the record. In the end we used a tape-delay echo, but it sounded new because nobody had done it since the 1950s. I remember Steve Marriott of the Small Faces came up and asked me how we'd got that sound. We were almost trendy for a while."

"Act Nice and Gentle"

The B-side "Act Nice and Gentle" was exclusive to this single, and has been described as a plea for "some civility". It has a "country-western influence" that foreshadowed the band's 1971 album Muswell Hillbillies. The song later appeared as a bonus track on the 1998 reissue of Something Else by the Kinks.

Legacy and accolades

In Britain, the song is commonly considered to be Davies' most famous work, and it has been "regarded by many as the apogee of the swinging sixties". Highly esteemed for its musical and lyrical qualities, the song is commonly the subject of study in university arts courses. Davies largely dismisses such praise and has even suggested that he would like to go back and alter some of the lyrics; most professionals, however, generally side with the observation of Ken Garner, a lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, who said: "Davies, like all the best singer-songwriters, is intensely self-critical."

Music journalist and critic Robert Christgau has called "Waterloo Sunset" "the most beautiful song in the English language". AllMusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine concurred, citing it as "possibly the most beautiful song of the rock and roll era". In 1972, Record World said that it "may be the best thing [the Kinks have] ever done". In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine placed the song at number 42 on their list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time"; it was re-ranked at number 14 on the 2021 revision of the list.

Pete Townshend of the Who described "Waterloo Sunset" as "divine" and "a masterpiece". Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark frontman Andy McCluskey noted the song as an inspiration, lauding "the incredible juggling act that Ray Davies achieved in combining a stunning guitar and vocal melody, backing vocals, and such beautiful but simple lyrics of classic working class urban poetry".

Ray Davies performed "Waterloo Sunset" at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. A subsequent reissue of the Kinks' original single entered the UK charts at No. 47.