| "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" | ||||
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Original single cover from 1966 |
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| Single by The Kinks | ||||
| B-side | "Sittin' On My Sofa" (R. Davies) | |||
| Released | 25 February 1966 (UK)[1] 27 April 1966 (USA) |
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| Format | 45 rpm | |||
| Recorded | 2 February 1966[1] | |||
| Genre | Rock, pop[2] | |||
| Length | 03:05 | |||
| Label | Pye 7N 17064 (UK)[1] Reprise 0471 (US) |
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| Writer(s) | Ray Davies[1] | |||
| Producer | Shel Talmy[1] | |||
| The Kinks singles chronology | ||||
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"Dedicated Follower of Fashion" is a 1966 single by British band The Kinks. It lampoons the contemporary British fashion scene and mod culture in general. Originally released as a single, it has been included on many of the band's later albums.
Musically, it and "A Well Respected Man" marked the beginning of an expansion in the Kinks' inspirations, drawing as much from British music hall traditions as from American rhythm and blues, the inspiration for breakthrough Kinks songs like "You Really Got Me". While it was quite scornful toward them, many of the fashionistas the song mocks would later take its title to heart.
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In the mid-1960s fashion in Britain was becoming increasingly daring and outrageous, driven by the youth-oriented culture of Swinging London. Boutiques such as Biba, designers like Mary Quant, and the television personalities like Cathy McGowan who popularized them became celebrated as much as the entertainers who wore their mod clothes.
Fashion trends changed rapidly, and the Carnaby Street shops did a brisk business from those trying to avoid seeming out of step with the latest craze. Ray Davies saw all this and satirized the hypothetical extreme, a superficial dandy whose "clothes are loud but never square / It will make or break him so he's got to buy the best ... He thinks he is a flower to be looked at ... In matters of the cloth he is as fickle as can be."[1][3]
Davies claims he wrote the song in one sitting, typing the lyrics out on a typewriter, with no later revision. It was performed with Davies mostly accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, with the rest of the band joining in on the "It will make or break him so he's got to buy the best 'cause..." and echoing the "Oh yes he is" lines in the refrain.[3] The band attempted recording the song a number of times, playing with the arrangement, lyric diction, and guitar sounds. Davies was never totally satisfied with the release version, and was angered that the song's production and release were rushed by Kinks managers and Pye Records. At least two of the alternate versions are available as bonus CD tracks and as bootleg recordings.
British record-buying public enjoyed the jab at "the whole Carnabetian army" enough to put the song into the top five. It reached the top of the charts in The Netherlands and New Zealand. In the U.S., however, it barely managed to crack the Top Forty, peaking at #36.[4] The lyrics won Davies an Ivor Novello Award for songwriting in 1966.
Despite its commercial success, the song actually began to trigger some of the identity crises that would later plague Davies' personal life. He wrote later:
With 'A Dedicated Follower of Fashion' such a hit, people started coming up to me on the street and singing the chorus in my face: 'Oh yes he is, oh yes he is,' as if to say that I knew who I was. Unfortunately, my inner and somewhat distorted sense of reality told me that this was not who I wanted to be: I didn't know who I was.[5]
In subsequent years many of those the song derided would later take its title to heart. Holly Brubach, fashion writer for The New Yorker, borrowed the song's title for a collection of her essays. Outside of fashion, the song's title has remained a metaphor for slavish conformity,[6] but in a more positive sense as an analogy for the growth of online social networks.[7]
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