Ray Davies, the Kinks' frontman, loosely conceptualised the album as a collection of character studies, an idea he based on Dylan Thomas's 1954 radio drama Under Milk Wood.

Despite its initial commercial shortcomings, Village Green has influenced numerous musical acts, especially American indie artists from the late 1980s and 1990s and Britpop groups including Blur and Oasis.

[14] Author Ian MacDonald further suggests that the band's US touring ban left the group comparatively isolated from American influence, guiding them away from their earlier blues-based riffing towards a distinctly English style.

Over the next year, Ray shifted his songwriting approach towards social commentary about contemporary British society, exemplified in the September 1965 song "A Well Respected Man" and February 1966 single "Dedicated Follower of Fashion".

[35] Academic Carey Fleiner writes that his idealisation of both rural and home life fitted in the revival of the "heritage escapism" trend, which surged across English popular culture following the Second World War.

[38][43][nb 6] In writing the songs on Village Green, Ray was initially inspired by Dylan Thomas's 1954 radio drama Under Milk Wood,[45] a work which focuses on the townspeople of a small Welsh town on a typical spring day.

[69][nb 10] Between late 1967 and early 1968, the Kinks remained generally inactive as a band; Dave spent time promoting his recent solo single "Susannah's Still Alive", and Ray wrote weekly songs for the BBC variety series At the Eleventh Hour between 30 December and 2 March.

[108] Miller suggests Ray may have desired to increase Village Green's track listing after becoming aware that both the Beatles and the Jimi Hendrix Experience would be issuing double albums.

[108] Interviewed in October for next month's issue of Beat Instrumental magazine, drummer Mick Avory explained that the band were talking to their record label about the possibility of having twenty songs on two LPs but sold for the price of one, something they hoped would give fans more for their money.

[117][nb 19] Engineer Brian Humphries later reflected that though Ray was not formally trained as a producer, he had become "quite knowledgeable" by the time of Village Green due to his practice of standing behind Talmy during the production process of the band's earlier albums.

[127][nb 20] String and brass sections are generally absent from the Kinks' late 1960s recordings, likely because Pye executives saw the hiring of an arranger and session players as too expensive to warrant; the album prominently employs a Mellotron as an inexpensive alternative.

[156] Though Quaife departed the Kinks roughly four months after the release of Village Green,[157] he reflected decades later that the album was the high point of his career, mostly due to the collaborative nature of its recording.

[160][nb 26] Because Ray remixed some tracks in late October 1968 after finding his original August mixes rushed,[78] the twelve- and fifteen-track editions contained additional differences.

[160][nb 27] The original stereo ending of "People Take Pictures of Each Other" featured a jazz band coda lifted from a pre-existing tape,[166] which Miller writes served to express "That's All, Folks!"

[178] Hal Horowitz of American Songwriter magazine similarly writes that the album's generally acoustic approach and simple production made it more readily described as "melodic folk/pop" than as rock music.

[181] The tracks often serve as portraits of the village's inhabitants or as a description of local attractions or activities;[122] character studies include "Johnny Thunder", "Monica" and "Do You Remember Walter",[182] about a biker, a prostitute and a lost friend, respectively.

[192][193] The song states the band's intentions to "preserve" things and consists of a listing of British institutions to be saved for posterity,[194] including vaudeville, the George Cross medal and its recipients, draught beer and virginity, among others.

[212] The composition coincided with a years-long reduction in the British railway network and the replacement of steam trains by diesel engines,[213] a change which went into effect two months before the song's recording.

[246] Miller suggests the song's warning about city life is similar thematically to "Village Green",[244] and Rayes writes its comparison helps contrast "rural with urban, spirituality with materialism, and the natural with the manufactured".

[207] Rogan compares its "vaguely Victorian flavour"[245] to the work of English 19th-century authors Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll,[249] while Miller instead describes it as a blend of contemporary children's music and psychedelia.

[252][nb 33] Ray's lead vocal is double tracked while Dave sings as the cat, his voice altered by recording the master tape slowly and then playing it sped-up.

[254] Played in the style of music hall,[256] the song employs an organ and a jerky rhythm,[254] shifting between what Miller terms a "music-hall gallop" in the verses and a "lilting, wistful waltz" during the choruses.

[268] Its lyrics recall the oak tree from "Village Green" and the theme of photography from "Picture Book", leading Miller to hypothesise that Ray composed it specifically to be a closing track.

[273] The song's theme of nostalgia lyrically relates it to the rest of Village Green,[274] and Alleman writes its motif of "looking back yet trying to start anew" makes it the composition most representative of Ray's songwriting in the 1966–1968 period.

[108] Ray began press interviews in mid-August to promote its release, the band performed some of its songs for BBC Radio in July and Pye placed advertisements in several British pop magazines.

[312] Both Miller and author Jon Savage suggest Village Green failed to register with the public, something they attribute to its separation from the contemporary culture's focus on revolution, protest and free love.

[314] Rather than finding the album out of step with contemporary culture, he writes its release corresponded with a surge of nostalgia and escapism in England, and that its championing of country living over city life aligned with the burgeoning ecology movement.

[334] In another positive assessment,[333] Disc and Music Echo's reviewer stated that Ray "managed to bypass everything psychedelic and electronic" by continuing to focus on "simple, even rustic melodies with words of wisdom".

Relevant themes include disparaging the increasing modernisation of cities and destruction of "little shops",[364] satirising those who photograph mundane moments, exploring the emptiness of celebrity culture and being suggestive of environmentalism.

[408] Ian MacDonald writes that in contrast to the "Englishness" of the Kinks' late 1960s work, the band's sound after their US performance ban was lifted shifted almost immediately back to being influenced by American acts, something he thinks was apparent on their next album, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire).