Cancel Culture Club #9: Lola

Welcome to the penultimate edition of the Cancel Culture Club. Yes, the steam's running out of this feature, but I like the idea of doing a Top Ten before calling it quits. Plus, I promised Ernie we'd find room for one of his favourites.

Meanwhile, we come to Lola. One of the biggest, most-loved hits by arguably Britain's best band of the 60s. Who in their right mind could possibly consider this classic pop song worthy of cancelling?

Step forward, honorary Cancel Culture Club member Richard Melville Hall, aka Moby, who last month decided that every copy of Lola should be burned in a big bonfire outside J.K. Rowling's mansion.

Here he is speaking the Grauniad, who probably cherished this quote and sent Moby a medal for his Services To Pseudo-Woke...

Lola by the Kinks came up on a Spotify playlist, and I thought the lyrics were gross and transphobic. I like their early music, but I was really taken aback at how unevolved the lyrics are.

OK, with the cat now firmly ensconced amid the pigeons, I wonder what the original CCC Committee members think about this matter? JC, The Vinyl Villain - care to offer your thoughts?

As long as I get to use the cliché ‘Moby’s a Dick’…

And to be honest, if that was the only response Moby's rant had elicited, I'd have been pretty content to leave it at that. But JC wasn't alone in his opprobrium. Here's the aforementioned Secret Agent and Alan Wicker replacement, Ernie from 27 Leggies..

Can we cancel Moby for being a pillock and, according to Natalie Portman, a bit of a creepy perv?

Do I need to add the word "allegedly" to that? Just to be on the safe side?

Blur - Girls & Boys

All very good, of course, but none of this is getting us any closer to considering the issue at hand - is Lola transphobic? SWC from No Badger Required...?

I do as it happens, have a very good story about Lola by the Kinks.....

Well, I do hope you'll share that with us one day, SWC, perhaps on your own blog in between all the other top notch features (currently a reader-generated list of the world's most underappreciated bands, of which my own entry will stick out like a sore thumb). 

Grace Petrie - Black Tie

Here's C of Sun-Dried Sparrows fame to finally address the gender-swapping elephant in the room...

Unlike Moby, I just can't get worked up about 'Lola'.  I interpret it as being positive, inclusive and, given the year of its release, really quite brave to tackle its subject at all, especially in such an unprejudiced way. I hear no negative connotations at all - in fact, quite the opposite: trans woman Lola gets pride of place, whilst the song's male narrator is self-deprecating and candid about his own naiveté.  

That's how I've always interpreted it, C - and as always, you are able to express that in a far more precise and succinct way than I could have managed. And although songwriter Ray Davies remained silent on Moby's comments, his brother Dave was less reluctant to wade in...

“I am highly insulted that Moby would accuse my brother of being ‘unevolved’ or transphobic in any way.”

Dave goes on to explain how the song had support back in the 70s from San Francisco band The Cockettes, which included transgender members.

“We appreciated them. Why is Moby being so rude about this simple song? We’re not transphobic. Why does he have to have a go at us?”

Furthermore, Dave shared a letter from Dallas-born trans-punk singer Jayne County who admitted to being “thrilled and amazed” by Lola...

“Lola will always be one of those songs that for me ‘broke the ice’ 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 ‘girl’ named Lola!”

The Replacements - Androgynous

All of which sounds pretty conclusive to me, but it does open up a wider issue, which - once again - I'll let C put into words far better than mine...

What concerns me more instead is if there becomes an increasing trend of jumping on the 'woke' bandwagon without actually thinking something through and fully examining why, and Moby's outcry about these lyrics strikes me as a perfect example of that - a knee jerk response.  There's only one jerk here as far as I can see, though, and it's not Ray Davies.

When I was initially putting together a list of songs for the Cancel Culture Club to tackle, I never considered Lola... until I asked Professor Google and found a number of people online who held the same opinion as Moby... and it wasn't just Lola that raised their hackles. No, there's also a lot of grumbling about this little beauty...

Holly came from Miami, F.L.A.

Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.

Plucked her eyebrows on the way

Shaved her legs and then he was a she

She says, "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side"

And because I figured that tune might well come up today, I mentioned it to the rest of the committee. Here's Walter from A Few Good Times In My Life with his thoughts on both tunes...

In both The Kinks’ song and “Walk on the Wild Side”, the lyrics are taken out of their original context. I can’t detect any homophobia or disrespect toward gender identity in either of them. What they have in common is that, in their lyrics, they tackled topics that were still considered taboo more than 60 years ago. 

I don’t think anyone should have the right to judge a historical phenomenon in hindsight. If such texts are no longer used today, that’s fine. But they shouldn’t be criticized in hindsight or from a narrow perspective. In that sense, “cancelling” them is not appropriate.

Thank you,  Walter. I think one thing we've agreed upon (with a couple of exceptions), through the duration of this feature, is that "cancelling" isn't appropriate in most circumstances. Maybe that's why we need to Cancel the Cancel Culture Club. Otherwise, we're just encouraging the likes of over-sensitive bandwagon-jumpers like Moby.

Frank Turner - Miranda

Our final response today comes from Swiss Adam, the man in charge of the Bagging Area...

Moby is, not for the first time, wrong. 

 

I've always heard Lola as being totally sympathetic to Lola and to trans people. In fact Ray concludes by saying 'it's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world / Except for Lola'. In the song, Lola is the least messed up and most sorted person. Lola knows exactly who she is. 

 

Walk On The Wild Side is a work of genius, a song by Lou Reed at his post-Velvets best and who was living at the time he wrote it (and for the rest of the decade) with Rachel, a trans woman. Lou is celebrating Holly, Candy, Little Joe, the Sugar Plum Fairy and Jackie and all the other mixed up, shook up people who lived in his downtown New York world. His use of the word coloured is dated but we're going to have to let that go, I think.

Yeah, but at that time, "coloured" was considered the less-offensive terminology, wasn't it? Which links very nicely to what Walter says above. 

The Velvet Underground - Candy Says

I'm saving Adam's final line to close this post with... but first, a confession.

I had hoped to get an expert, first-hand opinion on today's issue, so I sent an email to an old friend who has become a leading figure in the transgender community. I felt a little cheeky in doing so, but I also felt like I'd regret it if I didn't ask her opinion on the matter.

Sadly, my email received no reply. There could be any number of reasons for this, but now I'm wracked with guilt in case I've caused offence. This is someone who often speaks about her own journey, and who is considered a champion of the transgender community... but there's a difference between being approached for comment by the press, and getting a personal email from an old colleague. Because I didn't want to follow that email up and worsen any potential offence I might have caused, I'd like to apologise here for it, just in case. My intent was honourable, in my mind at least. 

Ezra Furman - Body Was Made

But this did make me think... just because Jayne County and other members of the LGBTQ+ community have leapt to Lola's defence, we can't take it as read that every trans person feels the same. As the Cancel Culture Club has proved, our responses to art can vary, and there's no such thing as a "wrong" opinion, if you can justify it. I find Forrest Gump a deeply offensive film, for example, while other people think it's just a bit of light entertainment with a cheery moral. Am I wrong or are they? Or are we both just responding to a text in our own ways? I guess what I'm saying is, if a trans person does find Lola objectionable, who am I to say they're wrong? They've got more right to their opinion than I have to cast aspersions on Gump. 

Against Me! - Transgender Dysphoria Blues

Still, I do think it comes down to intent versus interpretation. Going back to Moby's initial objection - is Lola... or Walk On The Wild Side, for that matter... actually transphobic? It may be possible to interpret either song in that way, but that surely wasn't the intent of either songwriter. One might infer an offensive meaning, but it doesn't appear either songwriter meant to imply that interpretation.

Or, as Swiss Adam puts it...

If Lou Reed and Ray Davies are on the wrong side of this debate, then I'm not sure where the debate has gone.