It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “Tired of Waiting for You” by The Kinks
February 24, 1965
“Tired of Waiting for You” by The Kinks
#1 on the Record Retailer Singles Chart (UK), February 18-24, 1965
Before the Kinks were one of the leading lights of British rock in the ‘60s, they were on the verge of being forgotten. The band’s contract with Pye Records stipulated that the label would drop them if they didn’t have a hit among their first three singles. After a pair of nonstarters, “Long Tall Sally” and “You Still Want Me,” the group’s third single became a surprise #1 on the UK charts and climbed to a healthy #7 in the US. “You Really Got Me” wasn’t just the hit that turned the Kinks’ fortunes around — it’s one of the foundation stones of rock ‘n’ roll, a power-chord anthem heavy with distorted guitar and lean on anything that would interfere with its single-minded drive.
Its follow-up, “All Day and All of the Night,” was a slightly more melodic, fleshed-out version of the “You Really Got Me” template and equally as good. The band, however, seemed uninterested in going back to that well a third time. Not only would they risk wearing out their welcome, but they also had more substance and ambition than that. Instead, they slowed the tempo and dialed down the hysterics.
The subject matter of “Tired of Waiting for You” is not typical pop fodder. It’s not about looking for love or celebrating love; it’s not even a kiss-off to a love gone bad. It’s a song about being bored and worn-down by a relationship that’s going nowhere. The repetitive structure of the song underlines the thematic holding pattern. Rather than a conventional verse/chorus structure, the song instead paces back and forth among three short, distinct segments. There’s no guitar solo or rave-up to alleviate the tedium, and a brief attempt to ramp up in the middle eight — “please don’t keep me waiting” — is quickly snuffed out in favor of returning to the locked-in pattern.
“Tired of Waiting for You” only contains about five lines’ worth of lyrics, but the economy with which they’re chosen hints at the acuity of Ray Davies’s writing that would come to fruition a few years later. Just the way he breaks up the line, “I’m so tired … tired of waiting … tired of waiting for you” into three discrete phrases, building from a vague dissatisfaction to a more specific, cutting grievance, illustrates a the layers of meaning lying within an apparently simple sentence. Likewise, the line, “I was a lonely soul, I had nobody till I met you” conveys a level of ambivalence that the repetition within the song bears out. The narrator may be tired of waiting, but maybe it’s better than having nothing to wait for.
Like “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night,” the whole of “Tired of Waiting for You” feels greater than the sum of its parts, largely because of the richness of the performance. Dave Davies’ sliding power chords, which defined the Kinks’ previous hits, would typically seem out of place in an introspective ballad. Here, however, that pulse of distortion adds an irritable edge, boiling over at times into the drums’ frustrated outbursts. Meanwhile, Ray Davies’s detached vocals add a note of resignation — he may rail against being forced to wait, yet he seems oddly accepting of the situation.
“Tired of Waiting for You” proved that the Kinks weren’t one-note wonders, content to churn out bluesy hard rockers, but a band with more tricks up its sleeve. As the middle installment of the band’s trilogy of UK #1 hits, it’s a fitting transition between “You Really Got Me” and 1966’s “Sunny Afternoon,” the latter emblematic of the observational lyrics and old-timey musical influences that would come to define the Kinks’ golden age. In the US, “Tired of Waiting for You” would become the Kinks’ highest-charting hit at #6, beating both “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night” by a single spot, and tying with 1982’s “Come Dancing.”
Shortly after “Tired of Waiting for You” became a hit, however, the American Federation of Musicians union banned the group from touring the US for four years, essentially cutting the Kinks’ American success off at the knees and igniting one of the great what-ifs in rock history. If the Kinks had been allowed to tour America through the late ‘60s, would they have equaled or surpassed the success of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, as they seemed poised to do? Or did the band need the cultural isolation to live up to their potential and evolve into their signature “very English” sound on albums like The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur (or the Decline of the British Empire)? While it’s impossible to say for certain, “Tired of Waiting for You” suggests a band that would have kept pushing itself forward and explore beyond a proven, hit-producing formula.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
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George L