(Credits: Far Out / Bent Rej / Bradford Timeline)
Mon 15 September 2025 6:00, UK
Out there, somewhere, there is an alternate universe working on an alternative timeline where all the ‘almosts’ of our reality happened. In that world, The Kinks’ ‘Waterloo Sunset’ isn’t about London.
“Terry meets Julie / Waterloo station / Every Friday night,” Ray Davies sings on one of his band’s most iconic tracks. It’s partly iconic for its instantly recognisable guitar line. But also, it’s earned a place in history as one of the most beloved tracks ever written about the UK’s bustling capital city, as the song looks at it through the eyes of a lone narrator wandering the streets, taking in the sights.
However, that wasn’t originally the plan. When talking about the origin of the track, Davies said that he’d actually had “the actual melody line in my head for two or three years.” It had been lingering for a long time, but originally, for some reason, he wanted it to be a song about Liverpool.
As he was crafting the song in his mind, it was originally going to be about a whole other city. “Originally, I was going to call it ‘Liverpool Sunset’,” he told NME, at first planning for it to be an ode to Liverpool and the Merseybeat scene that had been so influential to him.
But Davies isn’t from Liverpool. The man was born and raised in North London with no personal connection to the scousers beyond a love for the music they made that influenced him in his youth and as he started the Kinks and started making his own music.
Originally, he wanted to honour that by writing about the city that felt like a spiritual home. But then The Beatles got in their first, writing ‘Penny Lane’ about their literal, actual home. “The Beatles came up with ‘Penny Lane’, and so that was the end of that. It happens quite a lot with my numbers. I work on a theme only to find, as it nears completion, someone else has come up with exactly the same melodic or lyrical idea,” the frontman said as the Fab Four beat him to it.
Honestly though, rightfully so. What The Beatles made was a personal ode to the city that made them and the people that raised them. It’s a deeply tender track because it’s real and remains a special song today as it felt like a gift the band gave back to their hometown. Had Davies made ‘Liverpool Sunset’, with no real personal connection, it certainly wouldn’t have come close.
The world stepped in to make that point clear to him too, as ‘Waterloo Sunset’ was formed from personal memories too. Inspired by the time Davies spent at St Thomas’ Hospital as a young boy, he recalled how “the nurses would wheel me out on the balcony to look at the river.”
Looking over the city, that memory has the same quality as the song, and the same quality as ‘Penny Lane’ as both are written by artists contemplating their home town.
Really, The Beatles did the Kinks a favour by beating them to it. Indirectly redirecting them, it forced them to write something more personal instead and, in turn, craft their own city-specific anthem still loved today.
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