{"id":491572,"date":"2026-03-23T22:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T22:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/491572\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T22:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T22:40:08","slug":"kinks-guitarist-dave-davies-hits-back-at-moby-for-calling-1970-single-lola-gross-and-transphobic-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/491572\/","title":{"rendered":"Kinks guitarist Dave Davies hits back at Moby for calling 1970 single Lola \u2018gross and transphobic\u2019 | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Kinks co-founder and guitarist Dave Davies hit back at Moby after the US electronic musician said that he could no longer listen to the band\u2019s 1970 hit Lola on the grounds that he found it \u201cgross and transphobic\u201d.<\/p>\n

Moby told the Guardian Saturday magazine\u2019s Honest Playlist<\/a> feature that he was repulsed by the song after it came up on a Spotify playlist. \u201cI like their early music, but I was really taken aback at how unevolved the lyrics are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The song details a young man in a nightclub falling for a figure who \u201cwalked like a woman but talked like a man\u201d. It concludes: \u201cGirls will be boys and boys will be girls \/ It\u2019s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world \/ Except for Lola.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davies responded on X: \u201cI am highly insulted that Moby would accuse my brother\u201d \u2013 Kinks songwriter Ray Davies<\/a> \u2013 \u201cof being \u2018unevolved\u2019 or transphobic in any way.\u201d In another post, he continued: \u201cI don\u2019t wanna show the guy up, but Moby should be careful what he says.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Kinks: Lola \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Davies referenced the 1970s San Francisco psychedelic hippy theatre group the Cockettes<\/a>, which had transgender members and performed in drag, saying that their members and friends \u201cused to follow us around on tour\u201d.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cWe appreciated them. Why is Moby<\/a> being so rude about this simple song? We\u2019re not transphobic. Why does he have to have a go at us?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kinks\u2019 Ray Davies (left) and Dave Davies in 1976. Photograph: Michael Putland\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

He also shared a letter from trans punk icon Jayne County, who he said wrote to him and his brother to express her delight over the song: \u201cOf course, when I first heard the name Lola, it conjured up memories of Marlene Dietrich standing on a stage in a crowded, smokey room singing one of her most famous songs, \u2018Lola!\u2019 From the 1930 film The Blue Angel,\u201d County wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always thought that the young lady in the song by the Kinks had perhaps taken her name from the Dietrich character! And [a] trashy, dark bar in London\u2019s Soho district would for sure have an \u2018interesting\u2019 array of night-time denizens! And a woman with a low voice and the name Lola, would certainly qualify for a possible encounter with either a transvestite or transsexual!\u201d<\/p>\n

In the letter, County described herself as \u201cthrilled and amazed\u201d that the Kinks would write such a song, and wondered if other listeners had clocked its subject. \u201cLola will always be one of those songs that for me \u2018broke the ice\u2019 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 \u2018girl\u2019 named Lola!\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that the song had propelled the Kinks into \u201cthe modern world. The REAL world! A world full of all kinds of people! Bisexual, gay, trans, not just a world full of straight heterosexuals!\u201d<\/p>\n

The LGBTQ+ subject matter of Lola was not without precedent for the Kinks. In 1965, their song See My Friends centred on a man unsure of his sexual orientation. Dave Davies also wrote in his 1996 autobiography Kink about having had affairs with musician Long John Baldry and producer Michael Aldred.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kinks co-founder and guitarist Dave Davies hit back at Moby after the US electronic musician said that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-491572","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\/491572","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=491572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}