It could be said that success on the Billboard Singles chart dictated terms in the early-mid 60s even more so than it does now. You release a flop single nowadays and it doesn’t necessarily mean the record company are going to push back the release date of your album, or scale back the marketing dollars initially allocated to promoting your next release.

Labels now - especially those of the indie persuasion, which surely would’ve made the best home for The Kinks if you’d shot their prime-time forward by around 40 years (Matador, Rough Trade, JagJaguwar etc etc) - are far more inclined to follow through on a big picture campaign rather than just pulling the plug at the first sign of trouble.

In the early-mid 60s, however, a pop group was only as good/valuable as their last single - a reality discovered by The Kinks following the release of their "Ev’rybody’s Gonna Be Happy/Who’ll Be The Next In Line" seven inch.

Despite having had three top five singles in a row leading up to the release, when “Ev’rybody” languished mid-chart in the UK the band’s US label (Reprise Records) balked. Reprise eventually released the single four months after the UK version but the marketing effort was purportedly mediocre, and as a result, both the single and the album it was taken from - Kinda Kinks - were met with only a moderate response.