The Guardian ranks the Kinks’ 40 greatest songs to coincide with a London exhibition about Ray and Dave Davies. The selection argues that the band’s lasting strength lay in combining hard rock, domestic observation, social satire and melancholy, while recognising occasional late-career highlights.

– The lower end includes 1993’s “Scattered”, praised as a touching reflection on the Davies family despite the band’s declining late-1980s output.
– Songs from the 1960s dominate the discussion, including “Rosy Won’t You Please Come Home”, “Two Sisters” and “I’m Not Like Everybody Else”.
– The ranking highlights overlooked material such as “Lavender Lane”, a 1971 criticism of gentrification, and “I Go to Sleep”, later notably covered by the Pretenders.
– Dave Davies’ “Living on a Thin Line” is singled out as a bleak portrait of Thatcher-era Britain, later reaching wider audiences through The Sopranos.