Today’s classic song of the day is about a girl, who’s really a guy, named “Lola.” Written by Ray Davies, the single was released by his group, the Kinks, in June of 1970. Despite its, at the time, controversial subject matter, “Lola” shot to #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #8 on the Cash Box Top 100. It was a #2 hit in Canada and the band’s native UK, and was #1 in Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and South Africa.
As noted, “Lola” is about a cross-dresser (or maybe a trans woman?) with whom the narrator has a brief and somewhat confusing encounter. As the lyrics put it:
Well I’m not the world’s most masculine man
But I know what I am and I’m glad I’m a man
And so is Lola
La-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Lola la-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Ray Davies said he was inspired to write the song after the Kinks’ manager Robert Wace spent a night in Paris dancing with a cross-dresser:
“In his apartment, Robert had been dancing with this black woman, and he said, ‘I’m really onto a thing here.’ And it was okay until we left at six in the morning and then I said, ‘Have you seen the stubble?’ He said ‘Yeah’, but he was too pissed [intoxicated] to care, I think”
Not surprisingly, “Lola” caused a lot of commotion at the time. Some radio stations refused to play it outright, others faded the song out before the final verse that revealed Lola’s biological sex, still others crudely edited that line out of the playback. Interestingly, the BBC banned the song for a different reason—the mention of Coca-Cola in the lyrics, which was viewed as disallowed product promotion. To each their own.
The question I have is whether “Lola” is politically correct or woke or whatever in our more enlightened times. Or is it insensitive or insulting to the trans community? I have no idea, but the individual highlighted in the song was obviously ahead of her (or their?) time.
And here’s your daily bonus video of the day, the Kinks performing “Lola” on the BBC’s Top of the Pops program in 1970. Note the replacement of the words “Coca-Cola” with “cherry cola,” at the BBC’s insistence. The rest of the song they kept the same.
