Another popular song is Extreme Ways, even if people don’t know it’s Moby. It closes out all five Jason Bourne movies.
Huh, that doesn’t even sound familiar. I may have missed him.
He did a duet with Gwen Stefani called “South Side feat” other than a talk show interview it’s all I know about Moby. I like the song Lola, I never took it as transphobic, but I guess I’m not the one to judge it either.
Bars and clubs are where musicians went to work and meet other musicians. And there wasn’t any reason a cross-dresser who could “pass” couldn’t be found in more mainstream clubs.
Seems like it was everywhere in 1999-2000. I think it was big in the type of commercials featuring a tech company product manager summiting Mt. Everest, without ever getting around to actually mentioning the product. “No boundaries. No limits. Amulent Solutions, for a sooner tomorrow.” That type of thing.
True, but irrelevant. Every discussion ever about “Lola” talks about their going to non-mainstream clubs. “Their” includes the band members, the manager, hanger-ons, friends. All emphasize how different the experience was from mainstream clubs.
Yes, that’s what i was trying to say. They went to a lot of queer bars. They hung out with a lot of transgender people and drag queens. That informed the song, i believe.
I’m a big one for interpreting art including the time of the art. In 1970, anyone with a penis was a man. “misgendering” was not a thing. The worst you can say is that this would be an unintentional misgendering (i.e. he wasn’t trying to be malicious). In fact, I’m certain that this line was written specifically for the ambiguity of “is Lola glad that I’m a man, or does Lola have a penis?” with no thought of it being insulting to Lola because at the time, it wouldn’t have been an insult.
In terms of judging the artist (eg, was the artist transphobic?), sure. But art that was appropriate, even progressive, for its time can feel awkward and uncomfortable today.
@Miller had a good example above. Huckleberry Finn was very anti racist in its time. But today, it’s awkward to read a work that uses the n word in the way it was used at the time, which has very negative connotations. And today it’s awkward that the book is overwhelmingly by, for, and about white people. Would a literary critic say that makes it a bad work? No. But might some Black people find it unpleasant to read? I have to think yes.
Similarly, Tolkien was not a racist at all by the standards of his time. But his time was extraordinarily racist. And his orcs reflect that. You can see in his multiple attempts to rewrite the origin story for the orcs that he realized he’d done something wrong, and was trying to fix it, and he was never satisfied. And the orcs we see in Mordor, at the end of LotR are much more human and sympathetic than the ones we see earlier, for that matter. And relatedly, he was sympathetic towards his one female character. (That would be Eowen. Arwen isn’t a character, and Galadriel is demigod, not a person.) But it’s still a little problematic for many modern readers that orcs are evil by birth and there no real place for women.
So I don’t know if this song feels awkward for trans people today. Two trans women have opined in the thread. (One pro, one con, i think.) But it’s entirely possible for it to be a good song for its time, and be difficult today.
That’s a really good way to put that.
I try to remember that our current attitudes are just as culturally situated as the attitudes of the 1970s. Almost certainly some of the ways that the wokest among us talk about gender today will be cringey as shit in fifty years. Knowing that helps me give a little grace to people half a century ago.
The real question is, has anyone tried running the title of this thread through an AI image generator?
Perhaps Destroyer, a sort-of-sequel ten years later helps clear things up? Or does it make it muddier?
“Met a girl called Lola
And I took her back to my place
Feeling guilty, feeling scared
Hidden cameras everywhere
Stop, hold on, stay in control
Girl, I want you here with me
But I’m really not as cool as I’d like to be
'Cause there’s a rat under my bed
And there’s a little yellow man in my head
And there’s a true blue inside of me
That keeps stopping me
Touching you, watching you, loving you
Paranoia, the destroyer
Paranoia, the destroyer
Well, I fell asleep, then I woke feeling kinda queer
Lola looked at me and said
“Ooh, you look so weird”
She said, “Man, there’s really something wrong with you
One day you’re gonna self-destruct
You’re up, you’re down, I can’t work you out
You get a good thing going, then you blow yourself out”
On the side topic of Under My Thumb, I never liked the original, but I do kinda enjoy the cover by the Who. The lyrics aren’t any less problematic by today’s standards, but it drops the final verse where the singer brags about being able to ogle other women, and Roger Daltrey’s delivery sounds less mean-spirited than Mick’s.
Their version has an interesting backstory. In 1967, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were arrestsd for marijuana possession and were facing five years in prison. In protest, Pete Townshend declared that, until they were released, the Who would exclusively record Jagger/Richards songs and decided to get a single out right away. There was one small problem, though - John Entwistle was on his honeymoon and was at sea on the QE2. Townshend was able to reach him by radio telephone to ask for permission to record without him, and John reportedly yelled “The Who can dump LSD in the water supply for all I care!” before hanging up.
As a result, Pete plays both bass and rhythm guitar, and they released it without a lead guitar part. The charges wound up getting dismissed, and Mick and Keith were free before the single managed to hit store shelves, so the protest was kind of moot by then, but it’s an interesting little artifact of their lad band power pop era.
Yeah, that’s a great story and there’s much more to add, but I will only post the other Stones song the Who did in that context:
I dunno. I kinda miss Brian Jones’ marimba part.
Odds & Sods is a fun album.
Speaking of The Who, I wonder what Moby’s opinion might be of their song “I’m A Boy” ?
(Also, a humble brag regarding The Who Hits 50!…the tour program book for the tour has a picture of mine in it.)
Or for that matter 905, John Entwistle’s abandoned sci-fi rock opera about a society of all-male clones who are married off to each other and don’t know what women are because they’re only grown as food.
If Time-Life was still doing music compilations, we could get an entire box set out of Moby Presents the Greatest Gender-Bending Pop Songs of the Classic Rock Era.
I think the vocal harmonies are a nice touch, and the fact that there’s no lead guitar gives it a very unique sound.
Update/correction on this point. Upon looking into it, it turns out that the original UK single release did have a lead guitar part which mimics the marimba in the original, but the version on Odds & Sods and subsequent releases was derived from a flawed mono copy of the master which was missing that part.
Here’s a version that includes that part.
