Moby Says “Lola” Is Transphobic. The Kinks Say He’s Got It All Wrong.

It started with a Spotify playlist. Moby was scrolling through his queue when The Kinks’ 1970 track “Lola” popped up — and what followed was a short but incendiary comment that’s now ricocheting across music circles. In a Guardian interview structured around personal music memories, the electronic musician described “Lola” as “vulgar and transphobic,” adding that he was “baffled by how outdated the lyrics are.” He said he enjoys the band’s earlier work, but this one, he made clear, he can no longer stomach.

The song at the center of the controversy is the near-title track from Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneyground, Part One, the Kinks’ sharp-elbowed 1970 concept album aimed squarely at the music industry machine. “Lola” tells the story of a young, inexperienced man who meets a mysterious figure at a Soho club — someone who “walked like a woman but talked like a man.” Ray Davies has said the character was partly inspired by a real incident involving the band’s manager, who spent an evening in Paris dancing with someone he believed to be a woman, only to discover otherwise. Davies combined this with a playful refrain that came from watching his then two-year-old daughter repeat nonsense sounds: “Lola, lola, lola.”

Six years ago, marking the song’s 50th anniversary, Ray Davies defended it as part of an album that was “a hymn to artistic freedom — including mine — and to the right of anyone to not identify with any gender if they wish.” That framing, progressive for its time, hasn’t landed with everyone. Moby clearly isn’t buying it.

Dave Davies, Ray’s brother and the Kinks’ guitar force, was having none of it. After the Guardian piece surfaced, he went straight to X to express that he was “deeply offended” by the suggestion his brother was “backward” or in any way transphobic. But he didn’t stop at personal hurt — he backed up his position with a voice that carries real weight in this conversation.

Davies shared a statement from Jayne County, the pioneering transgender punk musician, who has been publicly championing “Lola” for decades. County called the song a barrier-breaker — one that brought a formerly taboo subject into the mainstream at a time when almost no one in pop music would go near it. She said it influenced her own songwriting, including “Wonder Woman,” and described it as the moment the Kinks “entered the modern world. The real world.” Her conclusion, as a trans woman herself: “This song will always be special to me.”

Davies returned to X for a second round, pointing out that the Cockettes — the San Francisco countercultural theatre group known for gender-bending performance and ties to the gay liberation movement — were fixtures at Kinks shows. “We appreciated them,” he wrote, before turning the question back on the critic: “Why is Moby so hard on this song? We are not transphobic. Why does he have it in for us?”

He also got some backup from an unexpected corner. Maureen Van Zandt, actress and wife of E Street Band guitarist Little Steven, weighed in with characteristic directness: people do this, she suggested, because they have nothing better to do than judge others who are more talented than them.

What makes this debate genuinely interesting isn’t whether Moby is right or wrong in his reading of the lyrics — it’s the question of how we situate a 1970 pop song within the present moment. “Lola” was released in a world with no framework, no language, and near-zero mainstream acceptance for gender nonconformity. The Kinks wrote about it anyway — not as a punchline, but as an encounter that left the narrator shaken and a little in love. Whether that’s enough, whether the song’s language holds up by today’s standards, is a fair conversation to have. But dismissing it without the full context — without Jayne County, without the Cockettes, without the year 1970 stamped on the label — isn’t criticism. It’s shorthand.

to @thelittleidiot Moby’s criticism of our song LOLA these are the words sent to me and Ray from our dear friend trans icon @jaynecounty27 #JayneCounty. I am highly insulted that MOBY would accuse my brother of being ‘unevolved’ or transphobic in any way. https://t.co/hBFmLPdMKH pic.twitter.com/qYcxoMc03d

— Dave Davies (@davedavieskinks) March 22, 2026