| "Picture Book" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
&sq=&lang=&file=File:%22Picture_Book%22_by_the_Kinks,_West_German_sleeve.jpg) West German picture sleeve (reverse) | ||||
| Single by the Kinks | ||||
| from the album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society | ||||
| A-side | "Starstruck" | |||
| Released | 8 January 1969[a] | |||
| Recorded | May 1968 | |||
| Studio | Pye, London | |||
| Genre | Pop | |||
| Length | 2:32 | |||
| Label | Reprise | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Ray Davies | |||
| Producer(s) | Ray Davies | |||
| The Kinks US singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Official audio | ||||
| "Picture Book" on YouTube | ||||
"Picture Book" is a song by the English rock band the Kinks from their 1968 album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Written and sung by Ray Davies, the song's lyrics describe the experience of an ageing narrator flipping through a photo album reflecting on happy memories from "a long time ago". Recorded in May 1968, its cheerful sound is defined by the jangle of an acoustic twelve-string guitar and a disengaged snare drum. In continental Europe, the song was issued as the B-side of the album's lead single, "Starstruck", in November 1968. The same single was issued in the United States in January 1969, though it failed to appear in any charts.
While "Picture Book" remained obscure in the decades after its release, the song has subsequently become one of the Kinks' most popular songs, due in part to its usage in a 2004 advertisement for Hewlett-Packard and Green Day featuring the riff in their 2000 single "Warning". Retrospective commentators have described the song in favourable terms and consider it one of the song's central to Village Green's concept. The song was covered by the Young Fresh Fellows in 1989.
- ^ Hinman 2004, p. 123.
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