Length 3:36 | Genre Rock | |
Released 3 June 1966 (UK)July 1966 (US) Recorded 13 May 1966; Pye Studios (No.2), London | ||
"Sunny Afternoon" is a song by The Kinks, written by chief songwriter Ray Davies. The track later featured on the Face to Face album as well as being the title track for their 1967 compilation album. Like its contemporary "Taxman" by The Beatles, the song references the high levels of progressive tax taken by the British Labour government of Harold Wilson. Its strong music hall flavour and lyrical focus was part of a stylistic departure for the band (begun with 1965's "A Well Respected Man"), which had risen to fame in 1964–65 with a series of hard-driving, power-chord rock hits.
Contents
Background
"Sunny Afternoon" was first written in Ray Davies' house when he was sick.
I'd bought a white upright piano. I hadn't written for a time. I'd been ill. I was living in a very 1960s-decorated house. It had orange walls and green furniture. My one-year-old daughter was crawling on the floor and I wrote the opening riff. I remember it vividly. I was wearing a polo-neck sweater.
Davies said of the song's lyrics, "The only way I could interpret how I felt was through a dusty, fallen aristocrat who had come from old money as opposed to the wealth I had created for myself." In order to prevent the listener from sympathizing with the song's protagonist, Davies said, "I turned him into a scoundrel who fought with his girlfriend after a night of drunkenness and cruelty."
Davies said of the song as well as its recording:
Sunny Afternoon was made very quickly, in the morning, it was one of our most atmospheric sessions. I still like to keep tapes of the few minutes before the final take, things that happen before the session. Maybe it's superstitious, but I believe if I had done things differently—if I had walked around the studio or gone out—it wouldn't have turned out that way. The bass player went off and started playing funny little classical things on the bass, more like a lead guitar: and Nicky Hopkins, who was playing piano on that session, was playing "Liza"—we always used to play that song—little things like that helped us get into the feeling of the song.
At the time I wrote Sunny Afternoon I couldn't listen to anything. I was only playing The Greatest Hits of Frank Sinatra and Dylan's Maggie's Farm—I just liked its whole presence, I was playing the Bringing It All Back Home LP along with my Frank Sinatra and Glenn Miller and Bach—it was a strange time. I thought they all helped one another, they went into the chromatic part that's in the back of the song. I once made a drawing of my voice on Sunny Afternoon. It was a leaf with a very thick outline—a big blob in the background—the leaf just cutting through it.
Release and reception
Released as a single on 3 June 1966, it went to No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart on 7 July 1966, remaining there for two weeks. The track also went to No. 1 in Ireland on 14 July 1966. In America, it peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart early autumn 1966. The promotional video for the single featured the band performing in a cold, snowy environment.
"Sunny Afternoon" was placed at No. 200 on Pitchfork Media's list of The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s. The song is featured in and is the title song of West End musical Sunny Afternoon.
Covers
The song has been covered by performers including: