Welcome to five hundred Greatest Songs, a podcast based on Rolling Stones hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversial list. I'm Britney Spanos and.
I'm Rob Sheffield. We're here to shed light on the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so great.
So, Rob, what song are we going to talk about today?
Song?
Very Near and Dear to my Heart Waterloose Sunset by the Kinks.
And this song was at forty two on the original list in two thousand and four and jumped up to fourteen and twenty twenty one.
Mind blowing.
Yeah, there was one of very many moments going through the list when seeing the new vote totals and seeing the reaction for the list and seeing the Waterloo Sunset?
Was this high? Just a beautiful, beautiful thing?
Was the song on your list at all?
Yeah?
It was?
And I love so many songs by the Kinks, but this one is so special.
Yeah, I love this song. I feel like I know kind of a lot of the bigger songs by the Kinks. There was also a well respected man I've always really liked his was in Juno.
It's so good.
Yes, it seems very well and you know but yeah, Like, I feel like there's so many different facets of the Kinks sound that it's kind of fascinating that's all the same band, you.
Know, Yeah, the hard rock Kinks and then the delicate introspective Kinks.
Yeah, and it's so.
Well that they're the the ultimate brother band, right. It's like there's Ray Davies, who's the shy, introspective, bookish one who's writing these incredibly delicate lyrics, and then there's brother Dave, the guitar solo guy, and such opposite personalities. And no brother band ever made more out of hating each other. Over the years, they made, you know, the Gallagher brothers
look like one big, happy family. They would just routinely gush blood on stage from fisticuffs, and that was something they were doing in the sixties when nobody was doing that.
We don't really have brothers doing that anymore. I kind of wish we did. We need we need a new pair of brothers to fight on stage.
Yes, awesome, we need sisters to open out this.
We need time to get if.
You have any issues you want to work out on sta on stage.
Yes, while you're all like doing the joint drumming moment like's let's get some blood.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. It was shocking to me that Waterloo Sunset was so high up on the list, given that, you know, it's never been a radio hit. It's never been a song that you hear in the deli, it's never been a song that gets synced in movies or TV shows, and so really for its entire history, it's
been sort of a cult favorite song. It's very comparable to pet Sounds, I think, in terms of the way Pet Sounds never blockbuster, but every generation discovers it and once you hear it, it's in your soul forever.
Yeah.
I don't remember why I first heard it. I'm I might have honestly been from the original list, like it might have been from reading the two thousand and four list and finding music from that, just because like I feel like every other really big Kink song I have very distinct like my shron in Reality bites and like you Really Got Me the Van Halen cover and like listening to that and like you know, I mean, Lola was just like always played on radio and stuff like that.
So I feel like this song, I can't really remember why I first heard it and why I love it so much. I honestly do think it might be from the original list and from listening that's so interesting, like it feels like appropriate for kind of how long I feel like I've known this song and where it probably came from.
It's just so delicate and vulnerable. I remember hearing it on the radio as a little kid, yea, and it was terrifying for me, just how vulnerable it was that here's this guy, and I knew in my head that he was the same guy who's sang you Really Got Me and all Day and all of the Night and all these bangers, and of course I knew and loved Lola and so many any of Ray Davies' songs were so funny, and some of them were so rowdy, and I hadn't yet heard his quiet, introspective, fearful side, and
just this incredibly intimate portrait of just a man living alone, looking out his window and following people day today, and knowing this couple who meet at the subway station every Friday night, and just rooting for them, and even though he's got no friends and no love of his own, he totally takes pleasure in this life that they're having there's no other.
Song like it. It's really amazing and you hear its.
Influence and songwriters now from Lord to Taylor Swift to even Drake. I think Drake has a lot of Waterloo Sunset energy in his songs. Yeah, Waterloo Sunset. It's so quiet and almost defenseless sounding, but just overwhelmingly joyful too. Yeah.
When I was reading about the song and like the history of it, it was really like how ray I felt so felt almost too vulnerable to share it with the band, Yeah, which is such like a striking thing about just kind of how intimate it felt, and also the fact, I mean it was originally going to be Liverpool Sunset and then a Peen Waterloo Sunset. But there's also like his history with that particular tube station in London, and how there's a hospital he was hospitalized as a teen really
close today. Just like all those little connections to it are really fascinating to learn about it.
Well, London is a city, you.
Know, Well, you become a regular in London and it loves you. I do listen Waterloos. I like to listen to songs of the cities that I'm going to when I go to them, just to get into little method traveling, you know. But I do listen to Waterloo Sunset every time I go to London.
It's so beautiful.
Yeah. Also it changes a song so much when you see the train station, which is not a romantic.
Places truly horrendous. I mean I can't imagine romanticizing a single tube station in London, but especially the Waterloo stations easy in there.
Yes, it's giant, it's impersonal. It's better now than it was, you know in the eighties when it was totally dump and in Ray Davies's time, it was you know, he really loved singing songs about London and it's when it was the big Black smoke because he loved to sing. He loved to sing songs about the seediest, crampedest, least glamorous parts of the city and to find romance there. But yeah, Waterloo Sunset really captures that.
I mean watching a sunset on river times is very, very beautiful, I will say, in spite of the station itself being kind of chaotic, you know, it is a there is a lot of beauty in that sort of scene no matter what. So I'm like I could see why.
I remember I was in London interviewing Lily Allen, the ultimate London girl you know from Clapham like and because she is so quintessentially London, and I was like, I'm here for a couple of days. What should I go see? What should I do? What kind of London experience? And she was like, to go to Waterloo Station and I was like really, And She's like, everything you think about the song is totally different when you see the station and you see the river and you know, he says
it's dirty, old river. It's dirty, it's old. Yes, And to have this beautiful story that's set in such an unglamorous urban environment, and that's the way he liked to tell his stories. Yeah, it's funny that this song, like you said, he meant it to be Liverpool Sunset and he's changed his mind after the Beatles did Penny Lane.
It's funny because.
Penny Lane is such a Ray Davies kind of song, and Paul McCartney was really the only other songwriter like Ray Davies at the time who's writing these songs about women in this really empathetic way that was completely unusual for male songwriters at the time. That these aren't romantic objects, and they aren't sexualized in any way, and they aren't
glamorized in any way. But when Paul sings about the nurse and Penny Lane and he's just like wondering what she thinks about, how she feels as if she's gonna play. Their characters have interior lives in a way that just makes other male songwriters of the era sound just really silly.
Yeah. Yeah. And the kind of like voyeuristic element, I mean kind of you know, kind of beautiful sort of witnessing of a love story unfold who reminds me so much of heroes as well, And like, of course David Bowie covered Waterloo Sunset and has a great version of it, but it always reminds me of that. The idea of like kind of looking through a window and seeing these lovers and kind of seeing it unfold in front of you.
That's such a brilliant comparison. That's absolutely right on. Yeah, it's very similar stories in a very ugly, unromantic, dirty unromantic kind of place to have this beautiful romantic moment that somebody witnesses. But you know, Terry and Julie that of course, like herrying it as a little kid. I didn't realize that they were named after you know, famous movie stars at the time symbolize swinging London for people, Terence dam and Julie Christie. Just the idea of this
old man. It's funny that I have such a vivid picture of a character and Waterloo sunset, and I picture him, this old guy, this really vivid narrow apartment and this narrow window that he's peaking through and seeing people walk by, and he's just happy that they have their lives and he doesn't feel bitter that he doesn't have that love and romance in his own life.
Yeah, really amazing.
Yeah, I mean even just the way that he sings and I Am Not Afraid is so heart wrenching, Like it's so beautiful.
It's really beautiful.
I feel like, Yeah, and both those songs are kind of witnessing these like this love and romance unfold. There's so much optimism, obviously, you know, this is Bowie and Berlin and kind of singing about the optimism of the future and like our hopes for it. And then of course this is like just just watching a mundane kind of day and seeing a lot of beauty in that is very striking in both.
Yes, absolutely and weird. There was such a commercial flop at the time. Yeah, and that's something that's as with Pet Sounds. It's like easy part of the story. I mean, Pet Sounds is such a classic now, it's weird to think that it was a total flop that almost destroyed
the Beach Boys when it came out. And the same is true with something else of the Kinks, that they had all those great earlies when they were like just you know, the ultimate London garage band, and you really got me is so great all day and all of the night. Like you said, there's a lot of hope and optimism in a song that you know, it's very like coming from a very sad place in some ways, but you know you could definitely hear that. I love
his wife's vocal on the song. He's always said that he meant it to be a Liverpool song, and then he thought, wait a minute. I've been a Londoner my entire life. I was born here, I grew up here. Why am I doing Liverpool song? London is my place?
And he had his.
Wife come in and sing, and she's doing those beautiful like vocal harmonies and you know, he's with his brother and they're getting along great that day. And it's funny that this song was made in an atmosphere of joy and community when the song is about feeling very alone but like you said, not feeling afraid.
Yeah. And why do you think it jumped up so much on the list in between?
I partly think it's because there's so many songwriters now who are trying to do this kind of song. And Waterloo Sinse that was very unique kind of song. But I still remember as a little kid hearing it for the first time, yea, being really shocked. I was like, wait, he doesn't need any friends. Wait, why is he out there trying to make friends? Isn't that how what usually happens in a song is somebody has an emotional problem
and they learn something, they get over it whatever. I'm like, No, this guy begins a song very sad and alone, and he ends very alone, but he takes joy in other people having their lives.
Yeah.
And that was a lot of process for me as a little kid. And I think because songwriters are now so interested in stories like that. You know, we mentioned Taylor Swift and Lord and Drake, but there's certainly a lot more. The song is sort of a template for kind of songwriting that people are more ambitious about trying now. And I remember that song. I remember when the two
thousand and four version of a list came out. I was so surprised it was so high then, And I was so glad to see it so high, because you know, it was never any kind of hit or radio staple. But something about the bravery of the song, that it's a song about a very shy person speaking up and telling the story of their life. I think that really speaks to people. I don't know what to make of this, but the fact that the balloting for this list was done in the spring of twenty twenty, when a lot
of people were feeling this way. I wasn't in the mood at all to listen to Waterloo Sunset. In the spring of twenty twenty, the pandemic started, we all thought it would be. It took everyone by surprise not to get into the whole story of it. But at that moment, a song like Waterloose Sunset was speaking way too much to like how I was feeling. That was part of my surprise seeing it so high in the list. I thought, you know, are people just feeling this way?
You could feel so much of that in a lot of songs in the way that things like shook out in terms of the voting, where you can tell people were literally going to their comfort songs in a lot of ways, and going to the songs that like bring them some sort of like warmth or like sometimes hope or sometimes kind of just like letting them kind of sit in whatever sadness or anger they were feeling at the time.
Absolutely, Ray Davies, He's got so much in common for me with Smokey Robinson as a singer and songwriter and someone who is able to like type into emotions that other songwriters at the time were just terrified of going anywhere near, and that they both had this really forlorn quality in their voices, and yet there's so much wit
and humor and playfulness in their songs. But I think of Ray and Smokey as two songwriters that were had a lot in common but very different from what anybody else was doing at the time.
Yeah, Ray Davies.
Something I love about Ray Davies that I love so many things about Ray Davies, but the fact that he's always surprised by which songs of his striking nerve with people over the years, and he's often expressed surprise that Waterloo Sunset means so much to people. It's funny that he did all these lofty, theatrical concept albums in the seventies The Kinks Present a soap Opera or preservation Act too, and that he thought of those at the time as
his major works of the period. And it was always so funny for him that people attached to Kink's deep cuts and B sides. It was really wild that for a long time he was in a couple with Chrissy Hind from The Pretenders when she was like the coolest punk rocker in the universe, and it was so wild that she was into all these songs that were Kink's B sides. She's saying I Go to sleep and stop your Sobbing, which were total deep cut yeah songs, and
that Van Halen did. Of course, they're huge version of you Really Got Me, But they also did this incredibly obscure Kinks by side where of all the good Times Gone.
He has so many.
Songs from this period that people will hear and they're like, nope, that's my song. So songs that were totally obscure and forgotten just became touchstones for people.
I love that there are multiple Van Halen the Kinks like connections. I didn't realize there's a second song that they also.
You mentioned David Bowie.
Yeah, and of course he did a beautiful version of this song after being a fan of it his whole life. It's fairly in two thousand and three with reality, But the connections between Ray Davies and David Bowie are so interesting.
Yeah, yeah, I love his version of it a lot. I didn't hear that until later. Honestly, I don't think I heard reality until like much later, But I do love that.
Very underrated, Oh my god, great period for Bowie. But Bowie always cited Ray Davies is one of his best influences, not just as a songwriter but as a singer. That they both were very into doing the London accent without toning it down to explain where it sounds really funny to American ears, like yeah, but you know, Bowie did wear of All the Good Times Gone on his Pin Ups album, and he really played up the sort of
you know, cartoon London schoolboys sort of accent. But yeah, the connection you made between Waterloo Sunset and Heroes is so fascinating because they were both so interested in these kind of love songs that take place with people who are misfits from the rest of the world and they just have nothing but each other, but that's enough for them.
Yeah, I mean just kind of the sort of like witness scene of a scene in pop music is always such an underrated kind of vehicle in singing about something like I just I love that sort of kind of that window into something else that a great pop writer could really yeah do where they kind of go outside of themselves and they're like, here's what I'm witnessing right in front of my eyes of this beautiful scene and kind of adding these kind of making up these characters
in the same way that a person does when they're listening to a great song.
Anyway, absolutely, I remember in the eighties Bob Geldoff did a sequel to Waterloo Sunset where.
Really where Terry and Julie.
Got married and then got divorced, and I remember thinking, like, Bob Geldoff, this is not your this is not your story. Yes, you don't have to break I get now that this is you know, like people hear different parts of their story in this song. But I remember I was appalled, like, you know, like when Bob Geldoff did this and I was, you know, a teenager, and I was like, you can't.
Have Terry and Julie break up.
There was the whole purpose, yes, But it's funny that to me Waterloos, since I was in a song identified with so much when I was nineteen and I thought, Wow.
This is me.
I'm the guy in this song. I felt so old at nineteen that I was like, yep, this is me. This is how the rest of my life will be. And it's funny that a few years later I've felt much more like Terry and Julian, And I thought, isn't that weird that when I was a teenager, I was so sure that I was the Ray Davies guy in this story, and a few years later I was like back to like feeling like Ray Davies again, and a few years later is back to feeling like Terry and
Julian again. Like, it's really funny that this is a story that we're all part of, from different areas, from different parts of the story, from different perspectives, and it's just a song that changes as you love it over the years. And the way he says very beautifully in the song, the social anxiety he talks about in such a matter of fact way, you know, like I'm so lazy. I don't like to wander. I stay at home at night. And I thought he liked Terry and Julie because they
leave the city behind and go home. It's like, no, they're not going home. They're going out, probably to the same bar and soho where Lola is hanging out. It really kind of changed the song that his selfless joy in the life that they have. It's just astonishing, what a generous song it is. It realids, you have a Beatles song that I know you love as much as I do. She loves you? Yea where Paul who's narrating the song, if we can call it Paul. It sounds
like Paul to me. But he's like, look, she loves you. She doesn't love me, she loves you. I think she's wrong about this. I think she's an idiot to love you so much. But you two have each other. You should be glad about this, and you should make things right with her. It's really amazing, Like how generous that song is that the narrator is very like, Yeah, you screwed it up with this girl. You need to make it, you need to fix it up because you're very lucky.
And the narrator of that song is so just something so selfless and generous about that. And there's a lot of that in Waterloo Sunset too. He's not watching them thinking, well, where's my Turry, where's my Julie. Yeah, he's just so happy to see how much they love each other.
Yeah, he's just just pleasantly watching and witnessing their love.
It's so nice, right, And it's funny because, like, you know, the way we're describing the song, it seems like there's no way you should be a to get away with it. It should end up being like sentimental in modeling.
Yeah, and it's so joyful.
Yes. Robert Chris Gaut called it memorably in his famous words, he called it the most beautiful song in the English language. Yeah, and when I hear it, I think Robert Christgau is absolutely right.
It really is one of a kind.
It's a kind of beauty that isn't even a more beautiful version of other songs. It's the only one like it.
Yeah, we are joined now by Rolling Stone senior writer Corey Grow. Thank you so much for being here with us.
Thanks for having me, Thanks Scry, Yeah, thank you.
Yeah.
And of course the song clocks in at number fourteen on the list. Were you surprised to see it ranked so highly?
I was pleasantly surprised to see it rank so highly.
Yeah.
I think it's ranked higher than I Want to Hold your Hand and lower than give Me a shelter, which is weird that it's a rare error right there. But yeah, I was. I was surprised, you know, especially since it wasn't really a hit here. Yeah, you know, it speaks to its influence with the way that resonated with people, you know, songwriters and people who actually like listen to music beyond the radio.
Yeah, And what do you think kind of brought it? I mean, for so many voters to rank the song so highly or included in their ballots, Like, what do you think it is about this song that for this twenty twenty one list, the song was so enduring that so many people voted for it.
I think it's just it hits you with this sentimentality you didn't. I mean, I guess there were a lot of bands that did a lot of that sentimentality back in the sixties, especially the late sixties, but there's just some nostalgic aspect of that song that I think reaches people, and just that melody, it just it just keeps you. You know, you want to hear it again, You want to hear it again and again again. I was listening
to what's his name from the old ninety sevens Rhett Miller. Miller, he did a live recording of it, and he says, this is the greatest song ever. I wish I could have written this, And like you know, there's so many different covers of it from like def Leppard that a really weird hard rock version of it, and Bowie covered it and all sorts of people. But there's just something about it that's got this nostal too that just hits everybody from all different walks of life.
Yeah, David Bowie was the last song he sang on stage in his entire life, which wasn't planned that way, but such a perfect song for him to sign off with, and that there's so much emotion and yearning in the melody and such an intensely like gritty, real visual story and seen through the eyes of this character. And you know, we learned so much about him just staring him talk about these people.
If you analyze the literature of the song, it's really fascinating because here's this sort of voyeuristic look at these two lovers from some unseen space. That's he's hiding up high and looking at them, and he's got this sort of Shakespearean son at one thirty lust for this train station.
It's like he loves Waterloo Station the way that only lou Reid could love New York, you know what I mean, Because it's just so like Bend to Waterloo Station and they gets gross and dirty, and he even likes he talks about people moving around like flies in Waterloo sunset. But you don't notice it because it sounds so beautiful. But you know, if you actually were to like analyze the lyrics, there's some really kind of weird grittiness to it.
It gets hidden in there. But going back to Bowie, one of my favorite things that I was reading, I'd read an interview with the Raid where he was talking about how when he and Bowie did it together at Carnegie Hall, and three they tried to sing like each other and that was their their challenge that like Ray wanted to sing like Bowie, and Bowie wanted to sing like Ray. If you listen to it online, it's really fascinating to hear it from that perspective. They're tossing it at one another.
There.
Wow, I never knew that, but they obviously such a huge influence on Bowie. Yeah, and just that really kind of vulnerable, quavery sort of voice.
And you've interviewed Ray before. What kind of stands out to you about him as a songwriter and performer, especially in comparison to his peers of that time.
A couple of things. One is he's unapologetically British. He loves to be English, you know. Obviously Village Green Preservation Society is him. He even you know, not in the sense of political, but he says it's a conservative album because he wanted to conserve the England that he grew
up with. So even like Waterloo Sunset, like you know, I compared it to lou Read before, like the only other artists that I could think of that loves his locality as much as Ray loves England would be like Lou with New York, you know what I mean, to the point that it's anti commercial, to the point that it really kind of in some ways just stymy to his career where he's this great songwriter that could have been so much bigger if he had written about other
places or things rather than just England does his big news. Yeah, and that's how Lou was too. Lou, didn't you have big hits other than you know, Walking the Wildside. But the other thing that strikes me about Ray is just how much he sort of cloaks himself and hides and
sort of evades things. And you can hear that a bit in Waterloo Sunset, because like the Terry and Julie characters, you know, he originally said that they were Terrence Stamp and Julie Christie, who were dating at the time, and then later said that Terry was based on like just the name of his nephew, and that Rosie, his sister who had moved off to Australia, was sort of the Julie type character, and that he had just picked Julie
as a name. And there's so he changes these things, and I don't know, have you read X Ray.
Have you read his memoir.
You have you read that?
Yeah, it was written at a very strange time for him in terms of like, yeah, getting his story straight. It was really weird whether it was written when it was written, and some of it he clearly believes in some of it he clearly doesn't.
Love that title. Yeah, great title for a memoir, and.
The book is like it's written from a perspective of a character and he's liken it. He wanted it to be his in abook of book and like unreliable narrator and all this stuff. So it's just like he'll do anything he can to sort of just hide his own the truth or whatever it is. So it's like nobody's ever really going to know the truth of Waterloo Sunset because he's given so many different explanations of it over
the years too. But yeah, those are the things that probably stand out to me most thinking about him.
Yeah, and they invented the brother band who hate each other. Yes, Like in terms of you know, like the Gallagher brothers had nothing on them when it came to just punching each other out on stage, never having a kind word to say about each other, but their brothers, and they did in one of their nineties albums. They had that great duet where they're saying hatred will keep us together, and it's really like their story, you know, Like there was that time, like a few weeks ago where they
posted photo of themselves watching the Arsenal game. I think it was they were just watching the football together, and like people around the world were like, oh my god, like Y and Dave like watching football together. That was so exciting to people, Like it's such a fascinating brotherhood.
Yeah, And I mean, but they're still not reuniting. You know, the Stones are playing met Life on a couple of weeks. Where's the Kinks tour? You know, that's that's the sibling rivalry.
I'm glad you Brob. The van Halen thinks they forgot about that, and you're the perfect person to talk about this with our as a resident metal expert. But like, what was that connection for Van Halen to to the Kinks, And like, you know, do they speak about it extensively and kind of that influence that outside of that guitar riff sort of inspiring so many bringing many genres.
Van Halen began as this backyard rock and roll party band, and so they did covers, you know. I think what's funny is they were originally called Rat Salad before they were called Mammoth, and rat Salad's like it's an instrumental break on a Black Sabbath record.
Yeah, but they they played.
Just whatever would get people moving, whether it was Sabbath or the Kinks or whatever. So I think the Kinks was just a hold over there.
They did where have all.
The Good Times Gone? Which is the that is the apotheosis of David Lee Roth in a single song, Like he just like owns that vibe of like where have all the good Times gone? Especially at that time and especially now, And it's just like, yeah, they were, they were the party band. So I think I think that it was just that it was just like, let's keep the live thing going, like especially if you listen to like old live record so that they would do it like the Whiskey and stuff like that.
It's just like, all right, everybody.
Knows the song, let's do it, you know. But yeah, it's just amazing to think of how prolific he was, you know, and that he would just dash off these songs and probably forget them and they would be brilliant.
Well, thank you so much Corey for joining us today. I really appreciate it.
Yeah, I have real joy to hear you talk about the Kinks.
You are like you, Ray and Dave are probably the living experts on the topic.
And Andy Green who should be here too.
Yeah, thank you very much for having me.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for listening to Rolling Stone's five hundred Greatest songs. This podcast is brought to you by Rolling Stone and iHeartMedia. Written and hosted by Rob Sheffield and Brittany Spanos, Executive produced by Jason Fine, Alex Dale, Christian Horde and Gus Winner, and produced by Jesse Cannon, with music supervision by Eric Siler.