Dave Davies hits back at Moby over 'Lola' transphobic critique
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- Moby told the Guardian Saturday magazine's Honest Playlist feature that he could no longer listen to the Kinks' 1970 hit "Lola" after it came up on a Spotify playlist, saying he was "really taken aback at how unevolved the lyrics are" and found the song "gross and transphobic"
- Dave Davies responded on X that he was "highly insulted" Moby would accuse his brother and Kinks songwriter Ray Davies of being "unevolved" or transphobic, adding: "I don't wanna show the guy up, but Moby should be careful what he says"
- The Cockettes, a 1970s San Francisco psychedelic hippy theater troupe with transgender members, and their friends "used to follow us around on tour," Davies said — "We appreciated them. Why is Moby being so rude about this simple song?"
- Trans punk icon Jayne County wrote the Davies brothers a letter saying she was "thrilled and amazed" the Kinks wrote "Lola," calling it a song that "broke the ice" by bringing a "hush, hush subject to the forefront and makes it sound perfectly natural to be singing a song about a 'girl' named Lola"
- The song "Lola" describes a young man in a nightclub falling for a figure who "walked like a woman but talked like a man" and concludes: "Girls will be boys and boys will be girls / It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world / Except for Lola"
- The Kinks had explored LGBTQ+ themes well before "Lola" — their 1965 track "See My Friends" centered on a man unsure of his sexual orientation, and Dave Davies wrote in his 1996 autobiography Kink about having had affairs with musician Long John Baldry and producer Michael Aldred
Why it matters: The dispute turns on whether 'Lola' is read as an exploitative or an empathetic portrait, and Davies is countering Moby with testimony from inside the trans community itself — specifically Jayne County, who credits the song with breaking a 'hush, hush' barrier, and the Cockettes, a drag troupe that toured alongside the band. The Kinks' pre-'Lola' track 'See My Friends' (1965) and Dave Davies's own documented relationships give that defense historical weight rather than mere denial.
