“Better Things” by The Kinks

"Better Things" is Ray Davies' breakup song, written in New York City about the looming end of his second marriage, at what he later called a depressing time. The idea first turned up during the Low Budget sessions, but he didn't finish it until 1981, when the Kinks put it out as a single, in June in Britain and November in America; a slightly trimmed version later landed on Give the People What They Want.

Davies has described it as a textbook Kinks construction, with a phrase that climbs the scale the way "Days" does and then, on reaching F sharp, swerves to an F sharp major chord instead of a B seven. It reached number 46 in the UK, the band's first British chart showing since 1972, and number 92 in the US, and American Songwriter crowned it their favorite breakup song in 2011.

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