“20Th Century Man” by The Kinks

The Kinks sent "20th Century Man" out as a single on RCA in December 1971, lifted from Muswell Hillbillies, an LP with its roots sunk deep in blues and country and its mind on hard times: the welfare state, poverty, alienation, new housing developments and all the other ways the modern world grinds a person down. Ray Davies wrote it and produced it, and his narrator is a man badly out of step with his century: he frets and grumbles about technology, about state bureaucracy and about modern art, and he'll take Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Titian, Leonardo da Vinci and Gainsborough over any of the new crowd, thanks.

Davies later traced it back to the breakdown of community in the years before the Second World War. Dave Davies counts it among his favorite of Ray's songs, an important one on any album and still relevant now.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.