People Take Pictures of Each Other
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"People Take Pictures of Each Other" is a song by the English rock band the Kinks from their sixth studio album, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968). Written and sung by Ray Davies, the song was recorded in July 1968. The song features a breathless vocal from Davies as well as harpsichord and piano from Nicky Hopkins, which was likely the last contribution he ever made to a Kinks recording.
Davies was inspired to write the song after attending a wedding and finding it strange that the bride and groom photographed one another. The lyrics satirise the absurdity of using photographs to prove one's existence. Retrospective commentators often describe the song the darker opposite of "Picture Book", another song on Village Green about photography. Others comment that its status as closing track serves to summarise several of the album's themes. The Kinks performed "People Take Pictures of Each Other" in concert in 1973, and it has since been covered by the Dig.
Background and composition
I was at a wedding. [...] and they all stood there and they took a picture. And then she got the camera and took a picture of him ... and he got the camera and took a picture of her ... that's strange. That's where that came about. I just got the line and then built on that.[1]
– Ray Davies on the song's inspiration, 1976
Ray Davies was inspired to write "People Take Pictures of Each Other" after he attended a wedding and saw the newlywed couple photograph one another.[2] The song's lyrics satirise the absurdity of using photographs to prove one's existence,[3] and Davies stated in his 1994 autobiography that its lyrics sum up how he feels about "the world of photographic images", which he thinks both encourage nostalgia and mislead the viewer by providing a narrow perspective.[4]
Author Johnny Rogan describes the song's sound as a cross between a Coassack dance and a Greek wedding, something he relates to its original wedding inspiration.[5] Like several of Davies's late 1960s compositions, such as "Autumn Almanac" (1967), the song features a sing-along format during its choruses,[6] a feature Miller relates to the influence of Davies's father, who regularly went to musicals and dances and encouraged his children to sing songs at the piano.[7] Kitts writes the music's mix of "breathy vocals" against the fast-paced piano and "thumping" bass convey both the passage of time and the anxiety of the narrator as he looks at photos of his happier past.[8]
The song is one of several on
Recording and release
Davies sequenced "People Take Pictures of Each Other" as the closing track of the original twelve-track edition of Village Green, and retained that sequencing when he delayed the LP's release by two months to expand its track listing to fifteen.
Other versions
The Kinks first performed "People Take Pictures of Each Other" in concert on 14 January 1973 at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, augmented by additional singers and a brass section. The show marked the earliest iteration of Davies's attempt at a theatrical presentation of Village Green, a project he titled Preservation.[27] The song was a regular in the band's February 1973 tour of the UK.[28]
The El Salvadorian group Los Comets recorded a 1969 cover of the song as "Hay Que Respetar", making it the only track on Village Green to have been covered contemporaneously.[29] American rock band the Dig covered the song in 2017, saying in an accompanying press release that the original had only become more relevant over time, further adding: "[T]he line 'people take pictures of each other, just to prove that they really existed' sounds like it could have been written as a commentary on pop culture in 2017. The idea that if it isn't on social media, it didn't happen."[30]
References
- ^ Breyer & Vittenson 1976, p. 8, quoted in Rogan 1984, p. 97.
- ^ a b c Miller 2003, p. 96.
- ^ Rogan 1984, p. 96; Rogan 1998, p. 66.
- ^ Davies 1995, p. 329, quoted in Rayes 2002, p. 161.
- ^ Rogan 1998, p. 66.
- ^ Faulk 2010, p. 119.
- ^ Miller 2003, pp. 18–19.
- ^ a b Kitts 2008, p. 124.
- ^ Miller 2003, pp. 5, 26, 71.
- ^ Miller 2003, pp. 26, 58, 96, 120–121.
- ^ Irvin & McLear 2003, p. 147, quoted in Miller 2003, p. 97.
- ^ Rogan 1984, p. 96; Marten & Hudson 2007, p. 96; Kitts 2008, p. 124.
- ^ Matijas-Mecca 2020, p. 107.
- ^ Jovanovic 2013, p. 150.
- ^ a b Rayes 2002, p. 161.
- ^ a b c Miller 2003, pp. 97–98n30.
- ^ a b Hinman 2004, pp. 117, 121.
- ^ Miller 2003, p. 21.
- ^ a b Hinman 2004, p. 121.
- ^ Miller 2003, p. 21: (engineers MacKenzie & Humphries, operated four-track); Hinman 2004, p. 111: (Humphries worked on recordings from May 1968 and later).
- ^ Miller 2003, p. 97.
- ^ Miller 2003, p. 97n30.
- ^ Altham 1968, p. 10.
- ^ Anon. 1968, p. 2.
- ^ Grow, Kory (26 October 2018). "15 Albums to Stream Now: Robyn, Thom Yorke and More Rolling Stone Editors' Picks". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 18 July 2022.
- ^ Enos, Morgan (22 November 2018). "'The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society' at 50: Every Song From Worst to Best". Billboard. Archived from the original on 3 April 2022.
- ^ Hinman 2004, p. 169.
- ^ Hinman 2004, p. 171.
- ^ Miller 2003, p. 98.
- ^ "The Dig – 'People Take Pictures of Each Other'". PopMatters. 25 September 2017.
Sources
- Altham, Keith (21 September 1968). "Kinks Reminiscing on the Village Green" (PDF). New Musical Express. p. 10 – via WorldRadioHistory.com.
- Anon. (23 November 1968). "Album Reviews". Disc and Music Echo. p. 2.
- Breyer, Mark; Vittenson, Rik (March 1976). "Kinks Konfessions: Ray Davies Revealed". Crawdaddy. p. 8.
- ISBN 978-0-87951-611-6.
- Faulk, Barry J. (2010). British Rock Modernism, 1967–1977: The Story of Music Hall in Rock. Farnham: ISBN 978-1-4094-1190-1.
- Hinman, Doug (2004). The Kinks: All Day and All of the Night: Day-by-Day Concerts, Recordings and Broadcasts, 1961–1996. San Francisco, California: ISBN 978-0-87930-765-3.
- ISBN 978-1-84195-438-7.
- ISBN 978-1-84513-671-0.
- Kitts, Thomas M. (2008). Ray Davies: Not Like Everybody Else. New York City: ISBN 978-0-415-97768-5.
- Marten, Neville; Hudson, Jeff (2007). The Kinks: A Very English Band. London: ISBN 978-0-8256-7351-1.
- Matijas-Mecca, Christian (2020). Listen to Psychedelic Rock! Exploring a Musical Genre. Santa Barbara, California: ISBN 978-1-4408-6198-7.
- ISBN 978-0-8264-1498-4.
- Rayes, Ken (2002). "The Village Green and The Great Gatsby – Two Views of Preservation". In Kitts, Thomas M. (ed.). Living on a Thin Line: Crossing Aesthetic Borders with The Kinks. Rumford, Rhode Island: Desolation Angel Books. pp. 153–164. ISBN 0-9641005-4-1.
- ISBN 0-241-11308-3.
- Rogan, Johnny (1998). The Complete Guide to the Music of the Kinks. London: ISBN 978-0-7119-6314-6.