{"id":490216,"date":"2026-03-23T02:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T02:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/490216\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T02:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T02:22:10","slug":"the-kinks-dave-davies-hits-back-at-moby-for-calling-lola-transphobic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/490216\/","title":{"rendered":"The Kinks&#8217; Dave Davies Hits Back At Moby For Calling \u201cLola\u201d Transphobic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today as part of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2026\/mar\/22\/moby-honest-playlist-donna-summer-celine-dion\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">The Guardian<\/a>&#8216;s Honest Playlist column, Moby revealed the song he can no longer listen to: &#8220;&#8216;Lola&#8217; by the Kinks came up on a Spotify playlist, and I thought the lyrics were gross and transphobic,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I like their early music, but I was really taken aback at how unevolved the lyrics are.&#8221; Moby didn&#8217;t specify exactly which lyrics bothered him in the 1970 hit, on which Ray Davies proclaims: &#8220;Girls will be boys and boys will be girls\/ It&#8217;s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, except for Lola.&#8221; Music historians have cited it as an early LGBT anthem, which was pretty much Davies&#8217; goal with the song: &#8220;I did a bit of research with drag queens,&#8221; he said in a 50-year <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/12\/01\/arts\/music\/kinks-lola-ray-davies.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">retrospective<\/a>. &#8220;I admire anyone who can get up and be what they want to be.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To prove that point in light of Moby&#8217;s comments, Davies&#8217; brother and bandmate Dave Davies shared a statement the Kinks received about &#8220;Lola&#8221; from the legendary transgender punk singer\/artist Jayne County. &#8220;I am highly insulted that Moby would accuse my brother of being \u2018unevolved\u2019 or transphobic in any way,&#8221; Dave wrote. County&#8217;s statement reads in part:<\/p>\n<p>When I heard the song I was both thrilled and amazed that the Kinks would be singing a song about a trans person and wondered if anyone else had picked up on it! Who was cool or hip enough to realize what The Kinks we&#8217;re singing about! Lola will always be one of those songs that for me &#8216;broke the ice&#8217; so to speak! A song that breaks down barriers and brings a used to be, hush, hush subject to the forefront and makes it sound perfectly natural to be singing a song about a &#8216;girl&#8217; named Lola! I don&#8217;t think the radio stations picked up on the subject matter but a lot of the fans did and that&#8217;s what really matters&#8230; Being Trans myself this will always be a very special song to me.<\/p>\n<p>See the full post below.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2493220\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Under-The-Influence-2.png\"   loading=\"lazy\"\/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2493221\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Under-The-Influence-3.png\"   loading=\"lazy\"\/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2493222\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Copy-of-Under-The-Influence-4.png\"   loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today as part of The Guardian&#8216;s Honest Playlist column, Moby revealed the song he can no longer listen&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-490216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}