Earworms: You Really Got Me by the Kinks

59 years ago, this was as heavy as it got

When I was a little kid, I remember regularly chanting TV commercial jingles while running around with my brothers and friends. A very early classic of the genre was for Ajax cleanser, which claimed to be “Stronger than dirt.” I really have no way of knowing if that commercial ran in England in the early 60s, and all the stories by the Davies brothers about the origins of “You Really Got Me” insist that it was originally written as a bluesy, jazzy piano number. But a part of me wants to believe that the classic rock’n’roll song, the breakthrough hit by the Kinks in 1964, was built around an only slightly changed “Stronger than dirt” reference.

The power chords played by Dave Davies on guitar through his distortion-heavy amplifier (achieved by cutting up the speaker cone in some fit of frustration that led to genius) are the same as the Ajax commercial, albeit with one extra chord thrown in. “Stronger than dirt” is sung on four beats, G – G – F – G (assuming it’s the same key, and it sounds as though it might be.) “You Really Got Me” is built on the same chords, only with an extra F at the very beginning, since there are five beats in the title phrase. This is why I have spent decades feeling the need to wipe away dirt whenever I hear the Kinks song.

Two repetitions of the chords charge up the record right at the beginning. They keep on coming, but at the start of the third bar the drums and bass join the fun, adding a thump and a deep boom to the sound. In 1964, there weren’t too many records that sounded this brash. Link Wray’s “Rumble,” a much slower, sultrier rock instrumental used power chords and heavy beats back in 1958, but not too many other songs from the charts come to mind. Howlin’ Wolf’s blues records may have used similar levels of distortion, but that was more in his voice than on the guitars. Somehow, Ray and Dave Davies, along with Pete Quaife on bass and Mick Avory (the band’s drummer relegated to tambourine on this record, with session player Bobby Graham behind the kit) came up with the most punk rock sound of mid-1964 all on their own recognizance.

Ray Davies starts singing his earnest tale of obsession. “Girl, you really got me goin’ / You got me so I don’t know what I’m doin’ / Girl, you really got me now / You got me so I can’t sleep at night.” The music slides up a fourth, making the riff G – A – A – G – A, and Ray is more impassioned riffing again on the first two lines of the verse. Then, it’s up to the fifth C – D – D -C -D, the backing vocals are shouting, “Yeah,” and Ray sounds unhinged from the lack of sleep he’s complaining about. Somewhere around here the second guitar becomes audible, playing a single line doubling of the power chords. There’s a full chord slash on C after three chants of “You Really Got Me,” while the drums keep the beat for two more bars, the bass slides back down to F, and the instrumental part starts over. A pounding piano reiterates the chords from the second repetition of this part.

So, yeah, it’s a blues-based rock’n’roll song, but without any blue notes. This is the teenage excitement of a boy seeing a girl, being seen in return, being unable to forget the thrill of her very existence. “See, don’t ever set me free / I always want to be by your side.” That’s the only other lyric change for the next verse, and the only time Ray Davies lets us think he’s loved back. She has him, she’s got him, she won’t let him sleep. The urgency of that feeling is matched by the thrill of those power chords and that insistent riffing pattern that stays throughout the whole song.

Then comes the guitar solo, another unprecedented explosion in the rock’n’roll canon. For decades, people wanted to believe Jimmy Page, who was a session guitarist at the time and who, apparently, did play on some Kinks records, did this solo. But all accounts by people who were actually there point to Dave Davies playing it himself, and it’s a perfect blistering rain of a narrow range of notes jumping, bending, repeating, slurring, all in rapid fire. It says all the same things the lyrics say, only with even more urgency – this is a full body alert about the power this girl has over the protagonist, who has shifted from Ray to Dave for the duration.

With forty seconds left in the 2:14 duration of this magnificent record, it’s time to repeat that second batch of lyrics, sound even more impassioned on the “Oh yeah” and “You really got me” parts, and then break down with three full chords and a cymbol splash to end it all. And you’ve got a record for the ages. I can’t even begin to imagine how incendiary this must have sounded the first time people heard it on the radio in 1964. It was more powerful than any other rock record. Even now, after hearing it hundreds of times, it feels as urgent as it ever did.

I dedicate this post to the memory of my late brother Brad, three and a half years younger than me, who always liked to insist the Kinks were ripping off Van Halen when I would play this song back around 1978 or 79.