1001 Other Albums<p><strong>The Kinks – Something Else by the Kinks (1967, UK)</strong></p><p>As randomly chosen by survey[1] on Mastodon, our next spotlight is on number 842 on <a href="https://1001otheralbums.com/the-list/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The List</a>, submitted by leodurruti.</p><p>If you’re following our <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/bowieaday/" target="_blank">#BowieADay</a> <a href="https://1001otheralbums.com/2025/01/07/bowieaday-2025/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">schedule</a>, the Bowie album on the docket today is <em>Reality</em> (2003). And TIL the Japanese and tour versions of <em>Reality</em> included <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJRgpGOBM5I&t=211s" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a cover of “Waterloo Sunset”</a>, which, also TIL, is the last track on the album we’re looking at here, <em>Something Else by the Kinks</em>. And, again TIL, that studio extra was recorded just a couple weeks prior to a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WFHiO0lwI0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">live duet</a> of the song by Bowie and his long-time friend Ray Davies, i.e., frontman of the Kinks, at the Tibet House Benefit in February 2003. To summarize, though “Waterloo Sunset” has been kicking around in my head for decades thanks to Elliott Smith’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFbQQzkZuqU" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">fantastic cover</a>, and though I’ve obsessively been listening to Bowie for nearly a decade, today is the first time I’ve listened to Bowie’s cover(s) <em>or</em> to the Kinks’ original. Indeed, today is the first time I’ve listened to an entire Kinks record. </p><p>How this happened, I don’t know. I’m familiar with the other big Kinks hits “Lola” and “You Really Got Me”, and I’ve had their next album, <em>The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society</em> (1968), on my unwritten list of albums to get to eventually for quite some time. And I knew Elliott Smith’s cover was a cover, one I’ve always loved at that, I just never really bothered to look up who it was a cover of. So when <em>Something Else</em> came up as the next album on The List to spotlight and I saw “Waterloo Sunset” in the tracklist, I went:</p><p>It’s a Kinks song?! <br>[*searches “Kinks Waterloo Sunset”*] <br>It’s a Kinks song! <br>Wait…Bowie covered it?! <br>Bowie covered it! <br>Wait, I thought <em>Village Green </em>was the Kinks album to listen to. Is it going to be a slog to get to “Waterloo”?<br>By golly it’s not a slog, this is great!</p><p>And that, friends, is the gift you all have given me and others like me with The List. It’s never too late to fill in those gaps, or to discover moar Bowie.</p><p>Also, friends, not sure if this was leodurruti’s intention on submitting <em>Something Else</em> rather than the much-lauded <em>Village Green</em> (which I also listened to for the first time today), but I think this album is possibly better than <em>Village Green</em>? But don’t listen to me, I’m just a newborn baby Kinks fan! And there’s, like, 24 other Kinks studio albums I have to get to now! Anyone up for a deep dive?</p><ul><li><a href="https://album.link/ca/i/1528512217" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Songlink: The Kinks – <em>Something Else by the Kinks</em></a></li><li><a href="https://www.discogs.com/master/73396-The-Kinks-Something-Else-By-The-Kinks" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Discogs: The Kinks – <em>Something Else by the Kinks</em></a></li></ul><ol><li>The survey choices that initially led to this spotlight were “I’m not a woman, I’m not a man”, “I am something that you’ll never understand”, “I’ll never beat you, I never lie”, and “And if you’re evil I’ll forgive you by and by cuz”. The second option was the winning selection, and so the survey result was translated as picking the second album in The List that contained a word in the phrase – in this case, “something”. ↩︎</li></ol><p><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/1001otheralbums/" target="_blank">#1001OtherAlbums</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/1960s/" target="_blank">#1960s</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/art-pop/" target="_blank">#artPop</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/bowieaday/" target="_blank">#BowieADay</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/david-bowie/" target="_blank">#DavidBowie</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/elliott-smith/" target="_blank">#ElliottSmith</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/listen-to-this/" target="_blank">#ListenToThis</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/mod/" target="_blank">#mod</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/music/" target="_blank">#music</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/music-discovery/" target="_blank">#musicDiscovery</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/musodon-2/" target="_blank">#Musodon</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/pop-rock/" target="_blank">#popRock</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/ray-davies/" target="_blank">#RayDavies</a></p>