The Kinks / Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One (Deluxe Edition) [2020 Stereo Remaster] / 1970
Lola
giddy, comic, tender, quietly defiant
Video: The Kinks on YouTube
A wide-eyed young narrator recounts a night at a Soho club where he meets a striking, ambiguous figure named Lola, and the song traces his confusion, attraction, and eventual acceptance as the encounter upends his assumptions about gender and desire. It plays the story for both comedy and tenderness, letting a novelty singalong hook carry a surprisingly frank subject for its era.
gender ambiguity sexual awakening urban nightlife innocence and initiation identity and self-acceptance
Who's speaking
A young, inexperienced narrator tells the story in first person, addressing the listener directly and recalling his own bewilderment; he's naive but honest, and his reliability comes from his willingness to admit confusion rather than resolve it neatly.
What happens
The song moves from a chance meeting on a dance floor, through physical and emotional confusion about the partner's gender, to a moment of panic and retreat, and finally to acceptance -- the narrator affirms his own identity while embracing the relationship on its own terms.
How it's built
Built on repeating verses that escalate physical and emotional detail, punctuated by a spelled-out hook that turns the name into a chant. The instrumental swagger and singalong 'la-la-la' choruses grow more insistent as the narrator's certainty grows, while a brief spoken-style aside ('I pushed her away... I got down on my knees') acts as the song's structural turn before the final affirming verse.
Section by section
Opening verses
The setting is sketched fast -- a club, champagne, a woman who approaches him -- establishing a conventional romantic setup before the details start to complicate it.the spelled-out name signals that this figure resists easy categorization from the outset.
Middle verses
“walked like a woman but talked like a man”
The narrator catalogs contradictory signals -- strength, voice, gait -- without resolving them, letting confusion sit rather than explaining it away. His confessions of physical and emotional inexperience frame him as an unlikely, almost accidental initiate into this encounter.
The turn
A sudden physical reaction -- pulling back, collapsing to the floor -- reads as panic or overwhelm, a moment of crisis that could stem from desire, fear, or both. The ambiguity is left intact; the narrator doesn't explain the retreat, only that it happens and that he then makes a choice to stay in the relationship on his own terms.
World commentary interlude
“mixed up, muddled up, shook up world”
This aside widens the lens from the personal story to a broader observation about shifting gender norms, positioning Lola as an exception or anchor within that chaos rather than a symptom of it.
Final verse and outro
“I know what I am and I'm glad”
The narrator's declaration of his own masculinity, paired with an assertion that Lola shares that same self-knowledge, resolves the song's tension not by clarifying Lola's identity but by affirming mutual self-acceptance. The extended outro chant cements the acceptance into celebration.
Craft
- spelling out words
- The letter-by-letter spelling of the drink and the name turns ordinary words into performance, mimicking the disorientation of a name and identity that don't fit expected categories.
- understatement
- The narrator repeatedly undercuts big emotional moments by calling himself 'not the world's most' this-or-that, using self-deprecation to soften the shock of what he's experiencing.
- refrain as chant
- The repeated 'la-la-la-la Lola' functions almost like a mantra, turning a personal, potentially fraught encounter into something communal and celebratory.
- physical detail as characterization
- Details like a crushing embrace and a voice pitched lower than expected build Lola's ambiguity through sensory observation rather than direct statement.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a sympathetic, if period-bound, portrait of a young man's encounter with a transgender or gender-nonconforming figure, told with more warmth than mockery -- the narrator's confusion resolves into affection and self-assurance rather than rejection. An alternative reading downplays the specifics of Lola's identity and treats the song more generally as a comic coming-of-age story about sexual confusion and first experience, using gender ambiguity as a vehicle for humor and shock rather than a considered statement. Both readings can coexist; the song's ambiguity is arguably the point, and it avoids being didactic in either direction.
Context
Released in 1970, the song was notably a commercial hit despite (or because of) its then-unusual subject matter, and it's often cited as one of the first mainstream pop songs to engage openly with gender ambiguity, though the band's own stated intent has been described in interviews as inspired by a real-life encounter; I can't verify specific biographical claims beyond that general reputation. The song required a lyric edit for radio (the original reference to a soft drink brand was altered) which is sometimes discussed in relation to its history, though I'm not fully certain of the details.
Listen for
- how the vocal delivery shifts from hesitant in the verses to full-throated in the chant
- the way the band's arrangement gets more triumphant as the lyric moves toward acceptance
- the brief break in rhythm at the 'pushed her away' moment, marking the emotional crisis
- how the spelled-out words mimic a kind of stammering discovery
- the double meaning built into the narrator's insistence on his own masculinity
About The Kinks
The Kinks were an English rock band formed in London in 1962. The band's original line-up comprised brothers Ray Davies and Dave Davies, Pete Quaife (bass), and Mick Avory.
1964 - 1996 / United Kingdom
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