Tag: 20th Century Man

Kinks – 20th Century Man

This is the twentieth centuryBut too much aggravationThis is the edge of insanityI’m a twentieth century man but I don’t want to be here

This song is for Song Lyric Sunday for Jim Adams’s blog. This week’s prompt is (drum roll please…) a song from a concept album. 

This song came from the album Muswell Hillbillies. A blogger friend of mine halffastcyclingclub, wrote up a post about it when I had the Kinks Weeks last year, it’s right here. Muswell Hillbillies is one of the many concept albums The Kinks did in the late sixties and early seventies. 20th Century Man kicks off the album. 

The song is an anthem of the over-civilized, over-documented, over-saturated age. Davies isn’t just annoyed by technology or bureaucracy; he’s exhausted by the entire machinery of progress. X-rays, radiation, political ideology, Big Brother watching from the corner of the room, Ray sees it all and wants out. Half a century later, 20th Century Man sounds eerily current. All those worries about surveillance, conformity, soulless routine? They didn’t go away, they just put on a fresh coat of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Musically, it’s a leaner Kinks, with no horn section, no vaudeville flourishes, and no trimmings. Just guitars, grit, and a message that cuts you like a cold wind. Even the production feels lived-in, like it’s already been through the wringer. At the end of the song, it comes to life with a frustrated Ray Davies singing that he cannot keep up and doesn’t want to be there. 

I can really relate to what he is going through in this song. This was before the 24/7 news cycle and advertising chasing us everywhere we turn. It peaked at #106 on the Billboard 100. The album peaked at #100 on the Billboard Album Charts in 1971. Lola just came out the year before, but it would be in the mid to late seventies when they returned to more commercial success. These albums, though, were great. 

20th Century Man

This is the age of machineryA mechanical nightmareThe wonderful world of technologyNapalm hydrogen bombs biological warfare

This is the twentieth centuryBut too much aggravationIt’s the age of insanityWhat has become of the green pleasant fields of Jerusalem

Ain’t got no ambitionI’m just disillusionedI’m a twentieth century man but I don’t want, I don’t want to be here

My mama said she can’t understand meShe can’t see my motivationJust give me some securityI’m a paranoid schizoid product of the twentieth century

You keep all your smart modern writersGive me William ShakespeareYou keep all your smart modern paintersI’ll take Rembrandt, Titian, Da Vinci and Gainsborough

Girl we gotta get out of hereWe gotta find a solutionI’m a twentieth century man but I don’t want, I don’t want to die here

Girl, we gotta get out of hereWe gotta find a solutionI’m a twentieth century man but I don’t want, I don’t want to be here

I was born in a welfare stateRuled by bureaucracyControlled by civil servantsAnd people dressed in greyGot no privacy, got no liberty‘Cause the twentieth century peopleTook it all away from me

Don’t want to get myself shot downBy some trigger happy policemanGotta keep a hold on my sanityI’m a twentieth century man but I don’t want to die here

My mama says she can’t understand meShe can’t see my motivationAin’t got no securityI’m a twentieth century man but I don’t want to die here

I don’t want twentieth century, manI don’t want twentieth century, manI don’t want twentieth century, manI don’t want twentieth century, man

This is the twentieth centuryBut too much aggravationThis is the edge of insanityI’m a twentieth century man but I don’t want to be here

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