Song of the Day 2/16: The Kinks, “Lola”
We all know Twitter has been experiencing lots of problems since boy genius Elon Musk bought it, but this one is more funny than ominous — though not to Dave Davies.
It seems an over-reliance on algorithms in lieu of humans has led the site to flag all the band’s tweets as “sensitive content.” As he pointed out in a tweet that, surprisingly, hasn’t gotten him kicked off the platform yet, “The Kinks are a brand name. We have been the Kinks since 1963.” Davies was trying to promote a new compilation album coming out to celebrate the band’s 60th anniversary.
Ironically, the one Kinks song that might warrant an actual kink alert, “Lola,” isn’t among the 30 on the two-LP set. Twitter algorithms weren’t the first to take the band’s name literally — drummer Mick Avory said they got invited to bars that catered to gays and transexuals, which helped inspire Ray Davies’ lyrics. Dave provided most of the tune.
The single reached No. 2 in the UK, No. 9 in the US in 1970, but not without controversy over the subject matter — this was more than two years before Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” charted. Some radio stations in Australia banned the song. So did the BBC, but not because of the sexual innuendos — the lyric “…they drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-Cola” violated its rule against product placement. Ray Davies had to interrupt an American tour to record the line over again as “cherry cola,” which is the version they used on “Top of the Pops.”
The ska revival band Madness did a reggae cover that sounds not much different from the original. I prefer this live-in-studio version by Lake Street Dive, whose Rachel Price gives the song an extra gender bend.
