"20th Century Man" (The Kinks)

"20th Century Man" is the opening track from the 1971 album Muswell Hillbillies--a concept album of sorts about modernization malaise.
Lead singer and songwriter for The Kinks, Ray Davies, grew up with his seven siblings (including younger brother, Dave, who was lead guitarist for The Kinks) in a tiny row house in a working class neighborhood of London called Muswell Hill.  Before Ray and Dave were born in the mid-1940s, the Davies had lived closer to the center of London in a spacious, old Victorian house with plenty of room for the whole family.  But then they were forced out in the name of urban renewal, and their beloved home was razed to the ground.  In the end, they moved to the only area that they could afford, and their new house was minuscule by comparison and their surroundings depressing; they were a family of 10, living in a house meant for a family of four, in the middle of a faceless London suburb.
The album and "20th Century Man" are studies in the psychological and emotional effects of having one's community/world turned upside down in the name of modernization.  In the song, the protagonist wants nothing to do with anything modern--going so far as to shrug off all modern art and literature, too.  Give me William Shakespeare, he intones.  I'm a 20th Century man, but I don't want to be here.
(The song reminds me a bit of my own childhood, watching my small neighborhood get dismantled by a road construction project.  It was very jarring.  Sizable maple trees that my father had planted in our front yard years earlier were snapped in two with a single swipe of a backhoe.  The little roadside store just over the hill where my mom would send me to buy milk, cornbread, candy, etc. was shuttered and reduced to a pile of gray stones.  Neighbors and homes that had been there for years suddenly were gone.  In fact, I recall watching workers physically relocate the Sizemore family's house across from ours, wheeling it down the soon-to-be multi-lane highway on what looked like a giant roller skate pulled by a semi truck.  All that remained afterward was a gaping hole framed by lonely shade trees and shrubs, looking like they were waiting for their house to come home.  Ah, eminent domain.  Ah, modernity.  Thomas Wolfe had it right all along...)
Apart from it being a great bit of lyric writing, it's a tasty little acoustic rocker with a jangly rhythm guitar line and pounding backbeat.  It cleverly builds to a simmer as the protagonist gets more and more disillusioned and disgusted with modern life, finally erupting in a full-on assault of electric organ and guitar.