Two singles crashed into the British top three before the record even shipped. Then the album itself landed with the commercial thud of a career low. Something Else by The Kinks turned fifty-nine years old today, and that gap between its hit singles and its dismal chart run remains one of the strangest disconnects in 1960s British pop rock.
Released on 15 September 1967 through Pye Records, this was the fifth studio album from Ray Davies, Dave Davies, Pete Quaife, and Mick Avory. Pye had already banked two massive wins that year. Waterloo Sunset arrived as one of the group's defining songs, and Death of a Clown, technically a Dave Davies solo project, rode the same wave. Both singles reached the top three.
Baroque touches and music hall phrasing
The album itself continued the band's eccentric lane, mixing baroque pop flourishes with music hall phrasing. Ray Davies wrote every lyric with a sharp, observational eye, turning suburban London into a landscape of small anxieties and quiet longings. Nicky Hopkins handled keyboard duties across much of the record, while Rasa Davies, Ray's wife, contributed backing vocals on several tracks.
Sessions stretched from autumn 1966 through summer 1967, a period when British rock was mutating weekly. The Kinks recorded End of the Season and the rest of the material during that window, still working with American producer Shel Talmy. Something Else marked Talmy's final 1960s credit with the group. After this album, Ray Davies took over production on every subsequent Kinks record.
Ray Davies' production anxiety
That handover was not a confident coronation. Ray Davies doubted his own abilities to mix and record songs properly. He later commented that he was not allowed to release anything else, and he believed the album needed a more worldly approach than he could provide. The transition changed the group's sound and production method, but the man at the controls was second-guessing every knob.
Reviews were positive on both sides of the Atlantic. British and American music press gave the album warm notices, praising its wit and arrangement. None of that translated to sales. Something Else became the lowest-ranking Kinks release in both the UK and US charts at that point, a position made more painful by the two preceding European hits.
The chart reckoning
The disconnect likely stung harder because the singles had proven the audience was there. Waterloo Sunset alone should have guaranteed attention. Instead, the album's chart position set a new floor for the band. Pye Records had a hit factory on its hands and a full-length that refused to move.
Time reversed the verdict. The album gained a cult reputation and high critical standing in later decades. In 2003, Rolling Stone placed Something Else at number 289 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. That ranking arrived twenty-three years ago now, long after the original pressing had vanished from most shop racks.
Fifty-nine years on, the album remains a hinge point. It closed the Shel Talmy era and opened the Ray Davies production years, a shift made by a man who openly questioned whether he should be doing the job at all. The singles soared, the album sank, and the man responsible for both spent the aftermath wondering if he had the wrong hands on the faders.
So which version of 1967 was true for The Kinks? The band with two top-three singles, or the band with their worst-selling album to date? Ray Davies never resolved that question in interviews, and the album itself offers no easy answer. Maybe the real legacy of Something Else is that both stories ran simultaneously, and neither one ever fully cancelled the other out.