I don’t know who Ray Davies is, but I like Moby’s stuff. I always thought Lola being transgender was the punchline of the song, which probably isn’t a good punchline these days. That song is a zillion years old though so whatever. I understand things were different back in the day. I also like that song.
I never interpreted it that way. Initially, yes - but not ultimately.
I don’t think there is much of a “beef” here. It sounds more like one person making a comment about a song, and when others reached out to the artist, the artist responded dismissively by saying they didn’t even know who that was. That seems to be the end of it. Whatever “beef” seems to be something being manufactured to try to make a story out of it.
Except it’s clearly not as @Gyrate says…
It’s clearly saying both Lola and the singer are glad they are men, but whereas the singer is unsure of his sexuality (the “mixed up, muddled up” bit) Lola is not. Lola is not muddled up or shook up, they are completely comfortable in their identity as a man who dresses as a woman and has sex with men. And that’s a good thing. Not only is that a progressive message for the time, I can’t think of any major pop songs with as empowering a LGBT message even today.
Maybe but whatever way you interpret that “pushed her away and walked to the door” verse. It’s definitely not “errrrr icky a man pretending to be woman!”, the singer clearly has feelings for Lola and pushing her away was on him.
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Yes, the song as a whole is positive about Lola, but the last line can, if you’re sufficiently touchy, be interpreted as not supporting Lola’s gender identity.
I think it arises because they couldn’t figure out a way to make it clear that Lola has a penis, and that’s okay. I mean, how do you fit a line like that in the song? But saying “Lola’s a man!” can be taken as some kind of trans-panic line, “She’s a man, baby!” style. They wrote themselves into a corner here. If they didn’t include this line, lots of people would have never figured out what the song was about.
But the pushing away didn’t last very long, and it is clear the singer wound up with Lola, which is how he learned of her(?) sexual identity.
At the time I always heard it as a cross-dressing gay man (Lola) hooking up with a non very masculine man who was not aware of his sexual identity yet (the singer) - but trans was not very much in the conversation back then, so Lola being trans works also.
However, it is definitely a love song, with a happy ending, no pun intended.
Now let’s address the real issue with the lyrics:
I fell to the floor
I got down on my knees
How the hell does he “get down on his knees” if he’s already “fallen to the floor”? That just make no sense!
Yeah that says a lot for Ray Davies. That was 30 years later and they still went for the dumb “trans panic” joke. In 1970 that attitude would have been pretty much the only one you’d have heard in any public sphere (if such things were discussed at all). It would have been very easy and made the whole song much more socially acceptable to add allusions to that affect. But he didn’t the whole song is an ode to Lola not mocking or condemning them.
Step 1:
Step 2:
I also used be a big Moby fan in the 90s too. I’d not listened to him in a while by the time that book came out, but that definitely took him way down in my estimation.
This feels like Moby groping for relevance and screaming for attention.
I always took that as he was reiterating for emphasis.
They could use a lot of feminine-coding but still consider themself a man. Although I agree that the previous comment might have been better said as “Lola may, in fact, not be a woman,” since other than that ambiguous line there isn’t anything in the lyrics to indicate that they aren’t.
Okay, again, I don’t necessary feel like defending Moby, but it was literally a question of “Song I can no longer listen to” in an ongoing music column. Probably no one even would’ve noticed except the Guardian chose that remark as the headline.
Here’s some other ones:
’I inexplicably detest Mr Brightside’: John Simm’s honest playlist
Finn Wolfhard’s honest playlist: ‘I don’t know if I want to hear Sweet Child O’ Mine any more’
‘Luke Combs has ruined Fast Car for me’: Martha Wainwright’s honest playlist
‘You’re Beautiful by James Blunt is terrible!’: Paloma Faith’s honest playlist
My wife’s SUV is called Lola because of the (still terrific after all these years) song.
I’m invested in the outcome of this one.
As is my wife.
And so is Lola.
But it’s absolutely not a punchline. It’s a heartfelt love song to Lola.
There’s that, but in light of How Things Were back then, and the rest of the song being so nonjudgmental, Lola is really notable for how transphobic it is not.
The song is basically “here’s a crazy story, I hooked up with a trans woman, she was nice, the end.” I was not alive in 1970, but I think this is astonishingly tolerant for a pop song of that era, much less a hit. In fact “tolerance” is stretching it, since the song is just telling the story like it’s more or less a routine and unremarkable coming-of-age story.
So Moby missed the mark here, and really he should be sitting down and reflecting on all the cultural appropriation he did on his 1999 Play album. I mean some of it worked well, but hoo boy, I can’t think of an album that’s a bigger heist of Black cultural influence since Led Zeppelin 2.
True. Where we sit in 2026 we may encounter an expectation to default to an absolute unconditional identification as woman, but Lola may indeed be feminine-presenting nonconforming yet considering themself a man.
( And, agreed: this was incredibly positive for 1970. And that the BBC was more concerned with the lyric saying “cherry cola” instead of “Coca Cola” will never be not funny.)
Does anyone know Fatboy Slim’s thoughts on Yoda?