Heart of Gold (The Kinks song)
1983 song performed by The Kinks
"Heart of Gold" is a song by the British rock band the Kinks. Written by Ray Davies, the song appeared on the band's 1983 album State of Confusion.
Background
"Heart of Gold" is an acoustic ballad in half-time. Music critic John Mendelsohn describes it as being country music-ish. Musician magazine finds the guitar work reminiscent of the Kinks earlier album Muswell Hillbillies. It was, according to Ray Davies, written about the birth of his and Pretenders front woman Chrissie Hynde's daughter, Natalie, in 1983. According to Davies, it was also inspired by a comment by Anne, Princess Royal in which she told intrusive photographers to "naff off". Davies had stated "I wrote about it imagining I was a photographer, but really it was about Chrissie having her first baby. Both she and Princess Anne seem to be quite anonymous people at times." However, Mendelsohn does not find the claim that the song was inspired by Princess Anne to be very credible. Musician describes the song's protagonist as being "tough but tender".
The public source identifies “Heart of Gold (The Kinks song)” as 1983 song performed by The Kinks. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Heart, Gold and Kinks.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q18160831. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “Heart of Gold (The Kinks song)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.