The Kinks invented the power chord. Despite what you may have heard, the basic rock ‘n’ roll power chord as we know it was shaped and perfected by Dave Davies on the Kinks’ mid-‘60s material. ‘You Really Got Me’ is the king of them, but there are plenty others. And if the Kinks’ career stopped there, that would be enough to qualify them as legends. But around 1967 or so, when everyone else started exploring the boundaries of psychedelia, Kinks singer and songwriter Ray Davies dipped back to his native England’s Victorian period, penning songs about a more pastoral and innocent time that somehow served as comments on modern-day society. For the next half-decade, the band released a string of terrific but low-selling albums that elevated Davies to one of rock’s best-ever songwriters. The band had a commercial rebirth at the end of the ‘70s that lasted until the early ‘80s. By the end of the ‘90s, they had broken up.