Songoftheday 1/8/13 - They put a parking lot on a piece of land where the supermarket used to stand...

The Kinks - "Come Dancing"
from the album State Of Confusion (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12

Today's Song of the Day is by the proto-punk pioneers of the British Invasion, the Kinks, who came together under brothers Ray and Dave Davies in the early 60s in London. After a couple of false-start singles, the band blew up in Britain and the States with their third single, "You Really Got Me", whose grungy guitar riff sounded like nothing else at the time, and ended up topping the English music chart and going top-10 in America. Within the next six months, they went to #1 again in the UK with "Tired Of Waiting For You", which peaked at #6 in the US. And while there's hits in America didn't go to those heights in the rest of the 60s, they remained huge in Britain, scoring another #1 hit in 1966 with the classic "Sunny Afternoon".

After a period of psychedelic and Anglophile music experimentation, the group returned to their garage-rock roots in 1970 with the all-out trans love anthem "Lola", with returned them to the top-10 in 1970. After a period of uneasiness in the 70s marred by Ray's drug use and middling success, they started getting back on track as American punk audiences appreciated the band's legacy and proceeded to have a reasonably successful string of albums in the States, but little play on the radio.

What gave the Kinks their big "comeback" single on the radio was a nostalgic look back on the dance-hall (not in the reggae kind) craze back in the 50s, inspired by the brothers' older sister. "Come Dancing" was stoutly and proudly British, but was such a well-crafted homage that American's fell in love with the song as well, complete with the best use of the mellotron since the E Street Band...

While "Come Dancing" stiffed at first in their homeland, the single became an MTV staple, and reached the top-10 on the pop chart in America, tying the peak for their highest-charting single. It also made the top-20 on the US rock radio chart. After its American success, the single was revived in the UK and made the top-20 on the singles chart there as well...

While the brothers trudged on for a few more years, "Come Dancing" would be their final top-40 hit (well, so far).

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


..and in an homage to their musical forefathers, punk group Good Riddance covered the song in 2001...

..as did the Briefs three years later...

Up tomorrow: the future chicken roaster ponders the length of his existence.