Monica (song)

Ray Davies composed "Monica" as a love song, sung as a serenade to a prostitute.[2] Its lyrics are deliberately subtle, never directly referencing her profession, something that arose out of Davies' desire to avoid a ban by BBC Radio.[3] The song's narrator claims Monica for himself,[4] but sings that while she is a prostitute her love cannot be bought.[5] Davies may have been inspired by the prostitute character Polly Garter from Under Milk Wood,[6] a 1954 radio drama by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.[7] The drama began to influence Davies's songwriting in late 1966,[7] and he later directly referenced Garter in his composition "Polly",[8] probably recorded around March 1968. Under Milk Wood's format of exploring characters in a small Welsh town later served as Davies's broader inspiration for the Kinks' 1968 album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society.[9] Author Mark Doyle suggests that in addition to Garter, the woman addressed in "Monica" may have been inspired by fellow Under Milk Wood character, Gossamer Beynon, the local school teacher whom all the men in town desire.[10] Author Thomas M. Kitts writes that in "Monica", Davies uses a typical trick of Thomas whereby a single word in a stock phrase is altered – in particular, Davies changes the phrase "morning to midnight" into "morning to moonshine".[4]

Musically, "Monica" is an example of calypso music,[11] a genre Davies first explored in his 1965 song "I'm on an Island".[12][lower-alpha 1] Author Johnny Rogan suggests Davies often used calypso as a contrast against his more serious songwriting and compares its "Acapulco-style beat" to another of his songs on Village Green, "Starstruck".[6] Kitts thinks the calypso rhythm is meant to suggest that the song takes place in the narrator's fantasy and emphasise that he actually only possesses Monica in his mind.[4] Author Ken Rayes describes the song's arrangement as "celebratory" in its incorporation of Caribbean rhythms, jazz tempo changes and a playful vocal from Davies suggesting a schoolboy-like innocence.[13]

The Kinks recorded "Monica" sometime between late 1967 and May 1968, during a period when the band recorded numerous songs without initially knowing when or in what format they would be released.[14][lower-alpha 2] Recording took place in Pye Studio 2,[17] one of two basement studios at Pye Records' London offices.[18] Davies produced the song,[17] while Pye's in-house engineer Alan "Mac" MacKenzie operated the four-track mixing console.[19] The song features a syncopated backing track, including an acoustic guitar, congas and organ. Bass guitar does not appear until the second verse.[3]

"Monica" was among the songs Davies selected for the aborted US album Four More Respected Gentlemen,[3] originally planned for a late 1968 release.[20] While sessions for Village Green continued through the summer of 1968, the Kinks performed the song for BBC Radio on 1 and 9 July 1968.[21][lower-alpha 3] Davies planned to include "Monica" on the original twelve-track edition of Village Green and he kept the song on the album when he decided to expand it to fifteen tracks, though he changed the planned sequence from the first to the second side of the LP.[22] Pye released Village Green in the UK on 22 November 1968, with "Monica" sequenced as the penultimate track.[17] In his preview of the album for New Musical Express magazine, critic Keith Altham wrote that "Monica" is an example of "the beauty of [Ray Davies]" in that "you are never quite sure when to take him seriously".[23]

Among retrospective commentators, Miller considers "Monica" "the flimsiest thing" on the album,[3] and Morgan Enos of Billboard placed it last in his ranking of the songs.[24] Rogan considers the song and "Starstruck" to be "distinctly un-Village Green compositions",[5] while Kitts counters that it fits into the album with its theme of escapism through obsession, something he thinks is also heard on "Starstruck" and "Phenomenal Cat".[25] Kitts and Miller each consider the song one of the album's several character studies.[26]