Better Things
This newsletter will serve up a new song with each posting. Some will be chosen for their sheer mastery and reach, some for quirkiness, some will be responding to events in the culture. Most will have a link to a video version—or at least a` lyric video’ version—usually on YouTube. .
As a longtime Kinks devotee—time spent on this site will reflect that-- I’m happy to lead off with Ray Davies and The Kinks’ “Better Things”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxiYVpd8k4A
The song emerged as a single from the band’s 1981 Arista album Give the People What They Want but was written for the 1979 predecessor, Low Budget, as a sort of farewell to Ray’s second wife Yvonne. The coming split was due to Ray’s affair with Chrissie Hynde, identified in the court papers as “co-respondent”, or as Hynde herself put it, “The Adultress” (“But I didn’t want to be…”).
The song has its own which has its winning attributes, but also claims a spot here in the hope of offering a listener some optimism to deploy while getting through what’s shaping up as a 2024 of electoral squabbling, wars around the globe, the ongoing and ravages of climate change, and fear of every new day’s news broadcast. But as with most memorable and loved songs, it’s at heart a personal message:
Here's hoping all the days ahead
Won’t be as bitter as the ones behind you
Be an optimist instead
And somehow happiness will find you…
This live version brings a certain ferocity, as the harmonies brother Dave Davies supplies bring their own fervency and as with the single recording also, Ray skates past borderline pitchy-ness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjFCt0RlZYM
For both studio and live versions, even as the melodic verses are sung more tenderly, the song’s most upbeat lines start out all but shouted :
It’s really good to see you rocking out and having fun
Feeling like life’s just begun
Accept your life and what it brings
I hope tomorrow you’ll find better things
As an aside, now that Dave has been mentioned, despite the endless feuding that gives rise to similarly endless rumors of reforming the band, there’s a magic to their harmonizing that is one of rock’s most rapturous sounds. “Days” , from 1968, is a song that has its own cherished place in the farewell-song firmament—a song that is played at funerals, and Davies himself has volunteered it would be apt for his own--and is likely one of the songs that made sometime competitor Pete Townshend suggest that Ray might have been a good choice as his nation’s poet laureate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR3AxsuNmWs
It would find a place at the top of American Songwriter’s “Favorite Break-Up Songs”, though in other selections they’ve issued, the likes of Alanis Morrisette and Sinead O’Connor’s hold the top spot.
A wider-ranging slate of songs addressing the theme would of course have to include O’Connor’s “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance” as delivered with full commitment at Holland’s Pinkpop festival in 1995:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiEcut07GrM
For this listener and many others perhaps, Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers” is a stand-out leave-taking , but for now, we celebrate the multitudes contained in “Better Things”. It’s been covered by Bouncing Souls, Dar Williams, Counting Crows (via a bootleg from a New Orleans club date), and Pearl Jam (on a fan club EP):
Searching further, Frank Black had a crunchy, sped-up take cover version as a 1996 B-side:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xc8b_YbdyY
And Fountains of Wayne (On “Late Night with Conan O’Brien ten days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks) and on the 2002 Kinks tribute album This Is Where I Belong:
https://youtu.be/hypcKzTb6KY?si=nZ-hVnuAR3q95Z5N
A kind of patio-rock group called The Poportunists bring sheer enthusiasm and a certain degree of Kinks mimicry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8zua14dRic
And finally, perhaps no cover effort better demonstates the deep and wide influence of Ray and the Kinks as this duet with Springsteen on the 2011 See My Friends tribute album:
https://www.npr.org/2011/05/29/136656570/ray-davies-thats-what-friends-are-for
There’s a snippet of the two musicians together to be glimpsed here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hq24rZQ_UE
And the version from the album, with Ray’s plaintive vocal trading verses—and at times blending with—Bruce’s gruffer-but-willing participation. History has bot recorded what confort it may have offered Ray’s ex Yvonne, but there’s no doubt it’s gotten more than a few people through a rough patch, so let’s leave their collaboration right here to enjoy:
