1964Released
2:14

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about You Really Got Me. By Songfacts®.

Kinks frontman Ray Davies wrote the lyric to this rambunctious rocker after watching girls dancing in a club. It's not the most articulate lyric, but that's the point: The guy in the song is so infatuated, all he can do is mutter at the girl how she's really got him. In 2015, he told Rolling Stone: "I just remembered this one girl dancing. Sometimes you're so overwhelmed by the presence of another person and you can't put two words together." Davies expanded on the song's inspiration during a 2016 interview with Q magazine: "I was playing a gig at a club in Piccadilly and there was a young girl in the audience who I really liked. She had beautiful lips. Thin, but not skinny. A bit similar to Françoise Hardy. Not long hair, but down to about there (points to shoulders). Long enough to put your hands through... (drifts off, wistfully)... long enough to hold. I wrote 'You Really Got Me' for her, even though I never met her."

Dave Davies got the dirty guitar sound by slashing the speaker cone on his amplifier with a razor blade. The vibration of the fabric produced an effect known as "fuzz," which became common as various electronic devices were invented to distort the sound. At the time, none of these devices existed, so Davies would mistreat his amp to get the desired sound, often kicking it. According to Dave, the amp slashing happened in his bedroom in North London when he was irate - he had gotten his girlfriend, Sue Sheehan, pregnant, and their parents wanted to keep them from getting married. Instead of doing self harm, he used the blade on the amp to channel his rage. The amp was a cheap unit called an Elpico that had been giving him problems - he decided to teach it a lesson! In the studio, the wounded Elpico was hooked into a another amp, which Dave recalls as a Vox AC30 and producer Shel Talmy remembers as a Vox AC10. The sound they got changed the course of rock history, becoming the first big hit to use distortion. Davies and Sheehan stayed apart, but she had the baby, a girl named Tracey who finally met her father until 1993.

"You Really Got Me" is the first hit for The Kinks. Before releasing it, they put out two singles that flopped: a cover of "Long Tall Sally" and a Ray Davis composition called "You Still Want Me." If "You Really Got Me" didn't sell, there was a good chance their record label would have dropped them, but the song gave them the hit they were looking for. Soon they were making TV appearances, gracing magazine covers, and playing on bills with The Beatles as an opening act. They didn't have an album out when the song took off, so they rushed one out to capitalize on the demand. This first, self-titled album has just five originals, with the rest being R&B covers - standard practice at the time for British Invasion bands.

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of You Really Got Me.
G♯Key
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
137BPM

Album

The album You Really Got Me is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released You Really Got Me.
Castle Communications
© 2004 Sanctuary Records Group Ltd., a BMG Company
℗ 1998 Sanctuary Records Group Ltd., a BMG Company

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