“Days” by The Kinks

Ray Davies wrote and produced "Days", and the Kinks issued it in June 1968 as a stand-alone single, though it did sneak onto an early edition of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society that only reached continental Europe and New Zealand. It's a goodbye that counts its blessings instead of its wounds, with the sadness sitting just under the skin.

Davies has given two accounts of where it came from. In 2018 he said his sister's move to Australia inspired it, the same departure that fed "Rosy Won't You Please Come Home" in 1966 and Arthur in 1969. He has also traced its air of finality to the turmoil inside the band at the time, when he suspected it might be the last Kinks single. The original single's label, meanwhile, printed the title as "Day's", thanks to a grammatical slip.

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