The Kinks: The Essential Album-By-Album Guide

THE KINKS (1964)
Key Tracks: "You Really Got Me," "Stop Your Sobbin' "
Quick Take: Depending on your perspective, the Kinks' debut album is either a spirited but generic blast of Londonbeat mayhem with one phenomenal song in the middle, or one song that's so phenomenal that it dwarfs anything that surrounded it. That song is the proto-punk, proto-metal, proto-everything "You Really Got Me." The two-chord riff moves mountains. Dave Davies, all of seventeen, uncorks arguably the greatest garage solo of all time.