"David Watts", by The Kinks. I am sorry to say that I have come rather late to the Kinks' late-sixties albums. And yet it seems like they have always been with me. Let me count the ways. "Days", by Elvis Costello. "Victoria", by The Fall. Ed Kuepper's take on "Last of the Steam Powered Trains". (Sorry about this one) "You Really Got Me", by Van Halen. And, it transpires, "David Watts", by The Jam. There was nothing about this song, as I have known and loved it for thirty years, that gave any indication it was anything other than a Paul Weller original. In its lyrics' theme and tone, and musically, it blended perfectly with what The Jam were all about. (Which, in many ways, was also what Ray Davies had been about -- a certain type of Englishness, which, being Australian, I am not qualified to dig into any more deeply.) The Jam were never really "punk" as much as they were, what, "British Invasion?", ten or a dozen years after the fact.
Hearing the originals of all of these songs after (in some cases long after) becoming attached to the versions listed above requires a bit of reverse engineering. But it is surely a testament to the quality of Ray Davies as a songwriter that each of them, with very little tweaking or manipulation, sounds just as comfortable in their old skins as in their new I'll shut up now ok thx bye.
