The Kinks - Waterloo Sunset - Lyrics Meaning

Waterloo Sunset was written by Ray Davies who with his brother Dave were the backbone of the highly successful London based pop group, the Kinks. As much as any other writer of the era, Davies words and music as well as his whimsical singing voice captures the atmosphere of London in height of the swinging sixties.

Ray Davies's lyrics seemingly describe a young man looking over the World and Waterloo Bridge on the River Thames in central London. Out of the millions of people that commute to work and play in central London, emerging from the Waterloo Underground Railway Station, Davies homes in on a young couple who he names Terry and Julie although he has never met them and never will. Every day he looks out at the scene and succeeds in picking Terry and Julie looking out at the sunset from Waterloo Bridge and wonders what will become of them.

There were some pretty strong rumors about that the Terry and Julie mentioned in the song were actually Terence Stamp and Julie Christie, two film actors that starred in a film called Poor Cow, that also told a story of life in London in the sixties, but Davies has almost emphatically denied the fact.