People Take Pictures of Each Other

The penultimate line is one of Ray's typical good ones: an off-handed toss-away with a thrilling touch of real candor, artless in its immediacy, but artfully constructed, hinging as it does on the present-tense "love". Can there be any doubt this is how he really felt in his time-worn young heart? So, that one.

It also negates the sentimentality of the album's opener. The speaker has experienced life and moved on from simple nostalgia.

Also, people who insist on photographs are annoying.

you can't picture love that you took from me

Great song! Another spritely little Davies ditty about how love is fleeting, nothing lasts, and everyone dies alone. Cheers!

Can there be any doubt this is how he really felt in his time-worn young heart?

Well doesn't he directly reject this feeling in the last line? I never caught what he was saying here before, but it seems to withdraw from not just his love of the past but the vanity of any attempt to capture a moment forever (pictures, songs, love, what have you). This dead end kind of has to be the last line, because there's nowhere left to go once it's been expressed. I'm voting for that. The song just concisely gives up.

I don't read or hear the last line that way, but I like your points. What I hear is "don't show me no more" because it's <i>painful</i>, you know?

You're right, though, the song does just concisely give up. Lotta Kinks songs like that -- they run their course and just announce themselves over: we've come to the end and so here, it's the end. It's that dumb smartness he's always had a knack for.

'Don't show me no more please' always sounded to me like an aside to the listener: 'Oh yes, loo at all the pictures! Look! I'm three! *stop please stop'

'Course, the best line in the song goes something like "la la la-la la-lie-lie-lie".

Thanks for starting this silly thread, btw. It's brought me back from a long pre-sandbox hiatus and will inevitably lead to me listing to VGPS again.

"listing" ha!

I think I'm coming around to your take on the last line. So he's just remembering a lost love that's still a fresh wound? I want to believe that's right, because between that and the option I had in mind (overwhelmed romantic vs. hopeless cynic) the former is generally more appealing and more in keeping with the romanticism of the whole record. And that way, he's tapping into the whole I Vant To Be Alone vein of grandiose post-breakup melodrama.

I see it as a conclusion to the whole album, which primarily is about nostalgia for his childhood (and belief in an England that never really existed, if you agree with those who see it that way). This last song rounds off the second half of the album, in which he leaves the Village Green and Does Things, by denouncing the sentimentality he so keenly embraced earlier.

It's also a cynical critique of the middle class, probably: The vigour with which some people insist on preserving moments in time that quickly cease to be relevant.

This passage really stands out for me:

People take pictures of each other
And the moment to last them for ever
Of the time when they mattered to someone

It's quite pessimistic and futile. Why bother taking these pictures when you won't even care about the person in them?

Of course he spent the following 40 years of his career returning to nostalgia, so perhaps he was just in denial or guessing his future mindset or something.

I think what I am trying to say is that he is an ornery bastard.

Here is a line worth voting for. "Just to prove that they really existed" is a great line, and so typically Ray Davies!

I like the "Fiddler on the Roof" feel of this song

A lot of good lines in this fantastic song, but I too love "just to prove that it really existed" (and the proceeding line). I think when I first heard that line, it stung. Made me start thinking about the slight pride I take in showing pictures to other people. Also, my memory is shit, so I've always relied on pictures to remind myself of my past. The other lines in this song ring true, but in a less direct way.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I am disappointed with these results.

Taken together, the top three represent the song brilliantly so ner.

I think each one of these lines equally represents the meaning of this song.

I am only disappointed that no one agreed with me. Heh.

Note: This is probably one of the best Kinks songs.