When their hit, Come Dancing landed on the charts in May 1983, one couldn't listen to Casey Kasem's Weekly Top Forty without hearing it. I mean, it was on their for seventeen weeks. It was here that I first got exposed to it, and candidly, I wasn't a fan. As such, it's ironic that when I started building my 80's collection that the subsequent album, State Of Confusion landed on my want list. It's odder that I took the plunge because it was a rather pricy used CD, though I suppose 2020 offered a lot of us the opportunity to waste money than we normally would have during a period of house arrest.
Sometime later I would hear the tune Destroyer from their 1981 released, Give The People What They Want. It's mixture of previous Kink hits into a new song really intrigued me, and soon that album made it to my want list as well. However, once again, price was a deterrent. As such, it would be 1984's Word Of Mouth which would get added to my collection in October of 2022, mainly because I found it at a used CD shop and opted to grab it. Otherwise, the purchase wouldn't have happened.
Three months later, in January 2023, I finally grabbed the album with Destroyer, and in my mind, I was kind of done with grabbing albums from the band, especially since I still hadn't listened to any of them. Of course, as it often is the case, I didn't stick with this. While perusing around a used CD shop in November of 2025, I came across a stack of albums from them that someone had turned in. Among them were their final two albums of the decade, 1986's Think Visual, and 1989's UK Jive. Also there was their 1987 live album, The Road, and of course, to add insult to injury, a much cheaper copy of State Of Confusion. With exception of the latter, I picked them all up, and that's the story of how I completed the entire 80's studio discography of The Kinks
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Playing through State Of Confusion, it's not as enjoyable as Give The People What They Want. It's noted by Ray Davies as a period of turmoil for the band, represented on the cover with everyone running in different directions, and perhaps this is what leads to a noticeably weaker album from its predecessor.
Things kick off with the title track, and it certainly sets a solid tone for things to come. From there, it's a mish mash of "good" versus "not so good". I only found a handful of actual shuffle worthy tunes, which included Definite Maybe, Property, and Clichés of the World (B Movie).
I can appreciate Come Dancing more knowing the history of the song, and the story behind it. However, it still remains just okay in my book. Still, had it not been for the song, and an itch to add it to my collection, I can acknowledge that I probably wouldn't have gone further down The Kinks rabbit hole. So, in that regard, it turned out to be a positive gateway to a broader world.
The album would be the last from the band to reach a sales certification, going gold in Canada. Come Dancing would peak on the Billboard at number six, and be followed by the minor hit, Don't Forget To Dance, which landed at number twenty-nine. However, it would ironically be the track Long Distance, which only appeared on the cassette version that critics would frequently reference favorably.
Side Note: There are actually two tracks that appear on the cassette version, which were not included on the vinyl or CD releases. Those were the above noted Long Distance, and Noise.
As for me, I'm still intrigued enough by the band that I'm eager to keep going through their albums. That puts my next stop at 1984's Word Of Mouth, which I'll dive into tomorrow.
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