"Tired of Waiting for You" (1965)

52. Kinks, "Tired of Waiting for You" (March 27, 1965, #6)

Here's one readymade for singing along with at the top of your lungs, at least if you're fortunate enough to have lungs in the right range and amenable mates. Just for the sake of common sense I save my bellerin' for the car when I'm by myself. It's lucky for me that this happens to be such an enduring staple on a certain persistent (not to say virulent) style of oldies programming, so I still luck onto it all the time, even on road trips. Especially on road trips. The whole little trilogy of mid-'60s hits by the Kinks, in fact, which this ended with a flourish (after "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night," not that I'm trying to shoehorn in extra titles or anything) is my favorite moment of many fine and strange ones from this protean unit and its variations (notably, elsewise, "Lola," The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, and the influence on the Pretenders). The impatient swagger and the impotent whining so elaborately on display here, the back-bending beats scattered across the toms with a hard turn for the bass player too, those electric guitars—there was no mistaking this for anything but Kinks music 1965 and real fine indeed. Everything about this particular model meant business, skinny ties jackets winklepicker boots snarls and all. This was still quite early in the British Invasion, a step behind the Beatles and Animals with the Stones. The reign of the Kinks may not have lasted much longer figuratively than these lovely sturdy two-and-a-half-minute rock 'em ups do literally; they wouldn't score another top 10 hit after this for more than five years. Still quite a wallop.