This Time Tomorrow (song)

Ray Davies said of the song's inspiration:

I felt that I'd lost contact with my family. Because I'd been in a pop music bubble for five years, and I didn't know the people around me anymore. 'This Time Tomorrow' was about transience, and an ephemeral world. Clouds, and where do we play tomorrow, and what am I doing as a person tomorrow? It's a floating song, and I was floating into a different era. Going with the flow for a while, until I work out where I want to be.^[1]

"This Time Tomorrow", like most of the other tracks on Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One, criticizes the music business. More specifically, the track complains of the monotony of being on the road. The singer, who is currently on a plane, wonders where he'll be "this time tomorrow." He fantasizes over what the future holds for him, pondering whether he'll still be on the plane, "watching an in-flight movie show", and dreaming of being "on a spaceship somewhere sailing across an empty sea." He'll "leave the sun behind [him] and watch the clouds as they sadly pass [him] by," and says he "can see the world and it ain't so big at all." "I don't know where I'm going, I don't want to see," the singer laments.

"This Time Tomorrow" opens with the sound of an aeroplane flying, followed by guitar and a National Steel resonator guitar. The song also features Kinks pianist John Gosling, with the song being one of Gosling's first ever appearances on a Kinks record. In fact, the song was among the tracks that Gosling attempted the first day he auditioned for the Kinks.^[2]