Sleepless Night: Oh, there's a rude little lady Livin' next to me. Oh, she sure loves someone, But it ain't me. Ev'ry night at twelve o'clock, They start to rock with all they got. They keep it up all night. It just ain't right. —— This is now the Arista Ray? Speechless. (Nominated for worst Kinks song to date.) Playlist: no change. 2 out of 6.
Sleepless Night After living with this album for the past week I've become quite attached to this song, so I find it disappointing it's being written off as generic/yacht rock. Oh well, I still like it. Dave's vocals are very good and I also like the lyrics: while they won't feature in Ray's career highlights I always enjoy a song about listening to noisy sex or noisy music. Either way, I'm good with it (the lyrics, not the noises per se). I too love the organ in this and I've narrowed down the song with a similar motif to the Blue Oyster Cult's Subhuman (off Secret Treaties, 1974). It's very similar, but I'm in no way suggesting this is a lift. There are only so many ways those notes can be played.
Here's a bit of a time capsule: the second mention, in two albums, of a couple balling or not balling, a term absolutely no one uses anymore--if they ever actually did--and the very last euphemism for sex I would expect from the Kinks.
It's certainly a long way from Ray Davies, the subtle and acute observer of human foibles from a distinctively English perspective. I wouldn't be surprised if he wrote it for Dave to sing.
I assume if Ray was living in New York, that may speak to it being somewhat less English... it's still a pretty honest observational lyric, even if folks feel it's distasteful or whatever.... I guess you have to have been there
Even though I (kinda) share your take on this track in terms of it's un-Kinksness I’m actually desperate to hear all the songs that didn’t make this album: I actually suspect that the most -contemporary rock 1977' tracks were selected for the album, and it's very possible that more idiosyncratic tracks were left off. Ray used to say that on Arista and London/MCA/Columbia, his more offbeat songs tended to get 'A and R'd' (referring to Artist and Repetoire this time I guess) off the album.. I do think that after 1976, it was much more of a struggle for those more some would say odder some would say more authentically Kinksian songs to get on the records, more than Ray entirely stopped writing that way.
Having a hard time believing that Ray wrote this, never would have guessed it. Edit: compare for example with Americana’s I’ve Heard That Beat Before, similar topic but executed with the skillful hand one would expect from Sirray. Maybe he was trying to write Sleepless Nights in Dave’s style?
"Juke Box Music" is the main Sleepwalker song I remember from the radio! And, it seems odd, but the single version is the one I know. I would have heard it on the FM rock station and I guess I always romanticize those stations as playing album cuts. At any rate, I love it! We get to the blast of guitar right away and we're off. I really think the shorter version suits the song better. And the acoustic break certainly evokes The Who. As a kid I identified with the lyrics and saw myself as one of those people who obsessed about music. "Sleepless Night" is pretty cool. Nice to hear Dave getting a song to sing. We certainly hear some gloss on this track and it would be interesting to ask Ray how that all came about and what he thinks of this record nowadays.
It's not so much that it's distasteful more that it's so dull and generic, it reads like it could have been written by any boneheaded rocker in any old rock band. That goes for the song as whole, in my opinion.
As for Sleepless Night itself, I'm still REALLY surprised that it's not a Dave written song: it sounds melodically like it could have come straight off of Dave's 'Decade' collection of contemporary self penned songs. I guess Ray knew his brother so well he could inhabit/take on (like a parasitical vampire???!!) his writing style to a tee when he wanted to. Or maybe Dave actually did write it and we're back to the old mid 60s thing of him just not being credited like with 'Wait Til The Summer Comes Along'! This track has the strong pungence for me of Stevie Nicks/Kate Bush emulating friends older sisters wearing puffy pirate shirts and reading tatty Ursula K LeGuin novels in their dope fume filled bedrooms while their younger brothers and their friends play Dungeons and Dragons in the pizza fumed filled basement below, which is to say it just sounds a particular kind of late 70s/early 80s suburban Americana to me, which I guess to a large extent was the intention, so job done kind of. It sounds nothing like why I got into The Kinks, and If I'd listened to this as 'the latest Kinks sound' in 1977 I think I'd have been hugely nonplussed, but seen with 20/20 in the larger view of their career I can enjoy it for what it is. Once again, it's got a pretty good melody, esp that brief bridge.
“Sleepless Night” I guess the title is appropriate for today because I’m up far too early reading this thread on my phone. @Zeki is also up pretty early! I have to side with @Vangro and @Zeki on this one. I was also very surprised to find out Ray wrote this song. I only noticed that a few days ago. I was ready to chastise Dave, but now it’s both of their fault, which makes it even worse! How did this song make the album? His vocal completely annoys me. Sorry Ray and Dave, but this is the worst Kinks song so far. I may have more to say if I can bring myself to give it another listen when the sun rises! I prefer Ray when he got some rest on “I Go To Sleep”! I will now follow that advice.
Yeah. And it's an Americanism toboot. Most dictionaries say it's vulgar U.S. slang. But then again this is a very mean-spirited song. This guy lives next door to his ex-girlfriend and listens to her making love every night and then complains he can't sleep. And we're supposed to sympathise with this creep?
Sleepless Night There was talk of Brother bring “written to order”, perhaps that was the original request but Ray misunderstood and thought he was told to write a song that his brother would write. So I end up here agreeing with avid @Luckless Pedestrian: And Ray absolutely nailed it. I’ve only known this song a few weeks as I’ve been diving into this album. I also thought and assumed it was written by Dave. It’s actually quite perfect for him, from the topic, to the lyrical choices (I hear that as “They okay but me I’m not”), to the verse melody and those “ooo-ooo”s. It’s screaming Dave, even if Dave is not screaming. The organ motif is memorable, and Dave’s guitar licks are good. His vocal is great, and I miss hearing him sing leads. Also, perhaps it’s only Juke Box music? They play that music ev'ry night. It rocks my bed; it shakes my light. I do want to make one other point: This song may be a lot of things, but Yacht Rock it ain’t. This is nowhere close, and I will defend actual Yacht Rock, as defined by the guys at Yacht or Nyacht (the official “yacht or not” scale) and the same guys who coined the term nearly 20 years ago when they made the “Yacht Rock” web series on channel101.com. For the record, no Kinks song has been officially judged to be “on the boat” or not, but looking at the songs and scores on the Yacht Rock scale, I imagine that Underneath the Neon Sign and our next track are very close to getting to the necessary 50 points on the scale to make it. Not a bad thing (to my ears)!
If it was a Fleetwood Mac song the jealous band member would likely know it's someone from his rhythm section laying down the beat upstairs with his ex!
Restless Nights: Peaks and valleys. This is a valley. Not Death Valley, but it's a road I haven't gone down since shortly after buying the album and learning how to use the FF key on the stereo. I, too, thought it was a Dave song simply because he sang lead vocals. (Fortuleo, double tracked vocals? Sounds like quadruple tracked!) And it says something about the "made to order" songwriting Ray employs here to match one of the sounds of the times that I couldn't even tell he wrote it. I guess this sound goes back to "Black Magic Woman" and then flowed continuously through the 70s to about 1978. The sinewy guitar riffs, organ, congas ... in general, didn't work for me. There are any number of portentous 70s pop songs this reminds me of, mostly from K Tel collections I recall in a haze, or bar scenes in detective shows from that time, but this isn't for me. It sounds like the kind of thing the guy in the stereo section of the department store would play for you to demonstrate "the power of the system" if he didn't have an Alan Parsons Project album handy.
If this is yacht rock whatever that means, the subject matter decrees it would have been the boat that rocked!
Writing for? It’s all on Ray but if I was to subscribe to giving him a way out…I’d point the finger at Clive Davis who, per Ray, wanted The Kinks to be “commercial” and Ray, on behalf of (or because he is) The Kinks agreed to become “accessible.”
You have obviously never been next to a couple banging the walls and being loud before ... it is a very broad stroke to assume this guy is a creep, because his ex-girlfriend lives next to him, which can happen in flats/apartments, and has loud sex
Juke Box Music It's just a gem of a song and I've loved it since the first time I heard it. I didn't realize it was Dave singing the opening lines. A Kinks Klassic. Sleepless Night It has it's moments but these are not great lyrics and it's pretty faceless, generic rock. The first real miss on the album. Why this over Prince of the Punks or even Father Christmas?
If I’m going to be critical about Sleepless Night, I really don’t like the Saturday Night Fever disco dancing finger in the air moment on “Oooh, this sleepless niiii-ii-iight!” Michael Jackson does it a few years later on Thriller and it’s my least favorite 2 seconds of that song too.
Sleepless Night A generic seventies rocker? Sure. But really good 70s rock! And yes, largely due to Dave's vocal which isn't something I would have expected to say, but it works. A little warmed over Cliff Richard/Gerry Rafferty vibe ain't necessarily a bad thing. So while it may be a lukewarm style for many here, the Kinks prove that just like everything from proto punk and garage rock to dance hall and vaudeville, they can do this style really well, and that makes it fit into my ear just fine.
