1966Released
3:30

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Sunny Afternoon. By Songfacts®.

Despite the title, this is not a breezy, carefree summer song. The guy in the song is a moneyed elite whose mansion has been emptied by the tax man, who even took his yacht! All he has to enjoy himself is the sunny afternoon. The song was written by Kinks frontman Ray Davies, who was going through a very difficult time. The Kinks were in the midst of a sudden rise to stardom, but group tensions, lawsuits, an unrealistic workload and craven management made them miserable. Davies was also dealing with fatherhood, and left the band for a while. While he was recovering, Davies wrote "Sunny Afternoon," putting the music together first and then creating an alter ego to voice his feelings. "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," he said. As he feared that listeners might sympathize with this sad, decadent Conservative, "I turned him into a scoundrel who fought with his girlfriend after a night of drunkenness and cruelty." When the song hit #1 in the UK (knocking off "Paperback Writer" by The Beatles), it did bring Davies out of his funk for a while.

In a Rolling Stone interview on November 10, 1969, Ray Davies talked about recording this song. "'Sunny Afternoon' was made very quickly, in the morning," he said. "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 it's 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."

Released as a single with "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" on the B-side, "Sunny Afternoon" was the third (and final) UK #1 hit for The Kinks, following "You Really Got Me" and "Tired of Waiting for You." Americans didn't take to The Kinks like they did to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and from 1965-1969 a union dispute kept them from touring in that country. Still, their early singles did reasonably well there, with "Sunny Afternoon" reaching #14 even though they couldn't set foot in the US.

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Sunny Afternoon.
DKey
MinorMode
4/4Time Signature
125BPM

Album

The album Sunny Afternoon is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Sunny Afternoon.
Castle Communications
© 2011 Sanctuary Records Group Ltd., a BMG Company
℗ 2011 Sanctuary Records Group Ltd., a BMG Company

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