Big Sky

"Big Sky" is a song by the English rock band the Kinks. Written and sung by Ray Davies, it was released in November 1968 on the album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. While Davies has typically avoided providing a direct answer on the song's meaning, commentators often interpret it as describing God as unsympathetic towards the problems of humans. Davies composed the song in January 1968 in Cannes, France, after watching people walk beneath the sunrise from his hotel balcony. The Kinks recorded it in October 1968, making it among the last songs recorded for Village Green. Davies' lead vocal alternates between singing, speaking and harmonising with his brother, Dave, while his wife, Rasa, contributes a wordless falsetto harmony. Though Ray Davies later disparaged his vocals and the song's production, contemporary reviewers and retrospective commentators have described it in favourable terms, highlighting its songwriting, while disputing its level of thematic cohesion with the other songs on Village Green. It is one of only two songs from the album that the Kinks performed live, including it in their set list from its release through 1971. Yo La Tengo and Matthew Sweet have each covered the song. Background and composition Ray Davies composed "Big Sky" in January 1968 while visiting Cannes, France. At the request of his song publisher, Davies was attending the second annual MIDEM Music Publishers Festival, an international music industry convention, hoping it would help boost his position in the record industry. He later recalled watching the sunrise from his balcony at the Carlton Hotel: "I spent an evening with all these people doing deals. The next morning... I watched the sun come up and I looked at them all down there, all going out to do their deals. That's where I got the 'Big Sky looking down at all the people' line. It started from there." Davies later stated that watching the businessmen from his hotel made him imagine "a being somewhat bigger than all the hustlers around me," but that rather than dealing with his dissatisfaction of the music business, the resulting lyrics are instead "more about the struggle of ordinary human beings surviving in the modern world."