“Waterloo Sunset” is a song by British band the Kinks. It was released as a single in 1967, and featured on their album Something Else by the KInks. Composed and produced by Kinks frontman Ray Davies, “Waterloo Sunset” is one of the band’s best known and most acclaimed songs, and is ranked Number 14 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was also their first single that was available in true stereo.
The lyrics describe a solitary narrator watching (or imagining) two lovers passing over a bridge, with the observer reflecting on the couple, the Thames and Waterloo station. Ray Davies claimed in his autobiography and in a 2008 interview, “It was a fantasy about my sister going off with her boyfriend to a new world and they were going to emigrate and go to another country.”
In 2010 Ray Davies stated the song was originally entitled “Liverpool Sunset”. In an interview with the Liverpool Echo, he explained: “Liverpool is my favourite city, and the song was originally called ‘Liverpool Sunset’. I was inspired by Merseybeat. I’d fallen in love with Liverpool by that point.
In the UK, 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 Caledonian University in Glasgow, who said: “Davies, like all the best singer-songwriters, is intensely self-critical.”
The record reached number 2 on the British charts in mid 1967. It was a top 10 hit in Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe. In North America, “Waterloo Sunset” was released as a single but it failed to chart. British singer-songwriter Cathy Dennis recorded a version of the song that was released as the second single from her 1997 album, Am I the KInda Girl? Her version peaked at number 11 in the UK and number seven in Iceland.
