Queer As Art issue 2 April-May-June 2017 | Page 38

The Kinks – Lola (1970)
Thanks to the radio hits You
really got me and All day and
all of The Night, The Kinks
were one of the UK's most
popular band of the mid-
sixties. Beginning as a Garage
Rock band which sounded
more rough than what the
Beatles were playing, Their
sound progressively changed
into Folk/Pop Rock. Near the
end of 1970, they released
Lola Versus Powerman and
the Moneyground Part 1
which is a concept album
about criticizing the music
industry. The title song Lola is an
uplifting rock-folk ballad and could
be one of the first times in music
history where the subject of
transgenderism is not treated as a
novelty song. The story is about a
man meeting Lola in a club. He
acknowledges her as a woman but is
still weirded out by the way she talks
and acts like a man. For the rest of the
song, the narrator becomes aware
that Lola’s transgender but still wants
to spend the night with her. The only
downside to this song, which has
aged badly, is how some ambiguous
37
lyrics reference the fact that she was a
man (especially in the last verse : «
Lola smiled and took me by the hand/
She said, "Little boy, gonna make you
a man."/Well I'm not the world's most
masculine man/ But I know what I am
and I'm glad I'm a man/So is Lola »)
but it remains a progressive song
back when it came out (in the late
60s/early 70s, Lou Reed and The
Velvet Underground also wrote trans-
themed song, most of them
referencing Andy Warhol’s muse
Candy Darling).