| "Picture Book" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 West German picture sleeve (reverse) | ||||
| Single bythe Kinks | ||||
| from the albumThe Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society | ||||
| A-side | "Starstruck" | |||
| Released | January 8, 1969 (1969-01-08)[a] | |||
| Recorded | May 1968 | |||
| Studio | Pye, London | |||
| Genre | Pop | |||
| Length | 2:32 | |||
| Label | Reprise | |||
| Songwriter | Ray Davies | |||
| Producer | Ray Davies | |||
| The Kinks US singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Official audio | ||||
| "Picture Book" onYouTube | ||||
"Picture Book" is a song by the English rock bandthe Kinks from their 1968 albumThe Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Written and sung byRay Davies, the song's lyrics describe the experience of an ageing narrator flipping through aphoto album reflecting on happy memories from "a long time ago". Recorded inMay 1968, its cheerful sound is defined by thejangle of an acoustictwelve-string guitar and a disengagedsnare drum. Incontinental Europe, the song was issued as theB-side of the album's lead single, "Starstruck", in November 1968. The same single was issued in the United States in January 1969, though it failed to appear in any charts.
While "Picture Book" remained obscure in the decades after its release, the song has subsequently become one of the Kinks' most popular songs, due in part to its usage in a 2004 advertisement forHewlett-Packard andGreen Day featuring the riff in their 2000 single "Warning". Retrospective commentators have described the song in favourable terms and consider it one of the songs central toVillage Green'sconcept. The song was covered bythe Young Fresh Fellows in 1989.
The Kinks' principal songwriterRay Davies reflected in 2002 that when he wrote "Picture Book" he did not initially intend for the track to be a Kinks song given the personal content.[2] It describes the singer's experience flipping through aphoto album reflecting on happy memories.[3] Musically, "Picture Book" is apop song,[4][5] and while its arrangement is cheerful, the lyrics do not directly describe happy memories, but instead the experience of a lonely ageing narrator looking at photographs from "a long time ago".[6] The song featuresbarbershop-like harmonies for a wordless vocal.[7] Ray sings "scooby dooby doo" in reference toFrank Sinatra's 1966 single "Strangers in the Night",[8] an improvisationDave Davies remembered arising while the band worked on the song's harmonies and his brother Ray mocked his suggestion of aJo Stafford-likejazz improvisation.[9] The melody employs a four-note ascending guitarriff of E, A, D and G.[10]
Later commentators typically compare "Picture Book" with "People Take Pictures of Each Other", another track onThe Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society about photography.[11] Author Thomas M. Kitts writes that "Picture Book" conveys ambiguity due to the discordance between its cheerful sound and the lyrics which instead recall "when you were just a baby, those days when you were happy, a long time ago".[12] Kitts thinks the singer's suggestion that happiness is located in the past is a theme running throughoutVillage Green,[12] and authorJon Savage considers the song one of the album's central statements, focusing around a wistful theme.[13]
Sometimes I think about songs as tracks ... The whole magic of ["Picture Book"] is that12-string guitar and thesnare drum with the snare off. It's the wayPhil Spector used to work – he had his sound and wrote songs to fit that sound.[14]
The Kinks recorded "Picture Book" in May 1968 in Pye Studio 2,[15] one of two basement studios atPye Records' London offices.[16] Ray is credited as the song's producer,[17] while Pye's in-houseengineer Brian Humphries operated thefour-trackmixing console.[18] The riff is played by electric, acoustic and bass guitar, and the song's distinctjangle-sound was achieved by Ray playing atwelve-string acoustic guitar.[10][b]Mick Avory altered his drum sound by disengaging thesnare.[21]
Ray later said he had a defined sound in mind when he composed the song,[14] and bassistPete Quaife recalled the band recording multiple takes as Ray searched for his desired result.[22] Unlike most of the album's songs, its mix emphasises the low-end, particularly Quaife's bass and Avory's drums, which critic Stewart Mason terms "cleverly sloppy".[23]
Dave later expressed pleasure with the song's sound, commenting, "I always had a sneaking love for Picture Book' ... I love the vocal parts and the blends of my voice and Ray's. ... 'Picture Book' has a great backbeat as well and I like the guitar riff, too".[24]
"Picture Book" was among the tracks Ray sent toReprise Records in June 1968 forFour More Respected Gentlemen, a US-only album planned for late 1968, though the project was aborted before its release.[25] While the sessions forThe Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society persisted through the summer of 1968, the Kinks mimed a performance of "Picture Book" for theBBC Two programmeColour Me Pop on 22 July.[26] "Picture Book" was featured on both the twelve- and fifteen-track editions ofVillage Green, sequenced as the third track in both cases,[27] and Pye released the fifteen-track edition in the United Kingdom on 22 November 1968.[17] In his preview of the album forNew Musical Express magazine, critic Keith Altham described "Picture Book" as a good example of the band's ability to extract a"'tinny' texture" from a guitar sound.[28]
AccompanyingVillage Green's release, "Starstruck" was issued as a single incontinental Europe backed with "Picture Book" in November 1968.[29] As theB-side, "Picture Book" did not chart, but did appear on theUltratip bubbling under chart in Belgium's French-speaking region ofWallonia.[30] In the lead-up to the album's American release, Reprise issued the same single in the United States, possibly on8 January 1969, though it may have been delayed a week. The single failed to chart in the US.[31]
I always knew that song would have its day. ... Sometimes you just know. It was never a hit, but it's become a hit in another way.[14]
The American alternative rock bandthe Young Fresh Fellows covered "Picture Book" on their 1989 albumThis One's for the Ladies,[32] a version Stewart Mason ofAllMusic calls "endearingly sloppy".[23] "Picture Book" remained an obscure song until its use in a 2004 commercial forHewlett-Packard advertising digital cameras and their accessories.[10][14][23] The song subsequently became one of the Kinks' most popular songs,[14][23] something journalist Andy Price thinks was furthered by the American bandGreen Day using its openingriff in their 2000 single "Warning".[10] In a retrospective assessment for AllMusic, Mason wrote the song's newfound attention is well deserved since its melody is one of Ray's best from that period,[23] andRolling Stone criticRob Sheffield called it "the best photo-album song of the pre-Taylor Swift era", while acknowledging the darker undertone of the lyrics.[33] In his ranking of the songs onVillage Green,Billboard critic Morgan Enos placed it first in his list.[4]
According to band researcher Doug Hinman:[34][b]
The Kinks
Additional production