The majority of chart artists content themselves with writing lyrics about relationships, breakups or their lavish lifestyles. Take the current top 10 song, Prada by Cassö, RAYE & D-Block Europe. As one might expect from the title, it speaks of designer clothes, fancy hotels and expensive cars. Other artists, however, satisfy themselves with something a little less glamorous – songs about the everyday, with lyrics about the ordinary and banal.
Social and literary realism have long been valuable tools in detailing the everyday lives of people, and they have been a staple in popular music for decades. When The Kinks released The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society in 1968, it was perhaps the first album to actively focus on the mundane, everyday aspects of life as lived by the average person in Britain.
It was about as far removed as it was possible to be from the psychedelic introspection that was popular among the biggest selling bands of the time (led, of course, by The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band). The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society delighted in detailing the smaller joys of life, with songwriter Ray Davies singing about strawberry jam, draught beer, custard pies and........