Lola

Photo by Melissa Rose  

  There are a lot of famous Lolas out there, but the Lola of my title is the name of a song first released in 1970 by a Beatles-era band called The Kinks. I don’t actually remember hearing Lola for the first time until I was in high school – a good ten years after it was originally released in the UK. A survey of most of my peers reveals similar memories. I think the timeline went something like this: The Kinks were kind of the progenitors of punk rock, and the late ‘70s and ‘80s were when punk went pop. So all the people who wanted to be cool, but weren’t really, were into punk. Of course, that led to lots of Kinks retrospectives in places like MTV and a big Kinks concert tour in the ‘80s, and I guess the rest is history.

  For a certain segment of the population, which I happen to belong to, when Lola comes on the radio, we magically lose our inhibitions and start to sing “Luh, luh, luh, luh, Lola!” at the top of our lungs. It causes a sort of spontaneous flash mob where people stop what they’re doing, sing Lola together, and when the song ends, go calmly about their business. In my experience, this phenomenon can cross a lot of age, cultural, and religious boundaries – despite the fact that the song is about, as Wikipedia so primly puts it, “a confused romantic encounter with a transvestite.”

  It has been argued that The Kinks were the bridge from the rock ‘n roll of the ‘50s to the rock, punk, and New Wave of the ’70s and ‘80s. So I guess it is no surprise that they recorded some music that still makes people sit up and take notice. But my interest in this song goes beyond the academic. To put it simply, Lola rocks. While I would like to say it is the guitar riffs that I love and I don’t really listen to the lyrics, this wouldn’t be true. Of course, I wish the subject matter was different, but the lyrics are extremely clever. As a writer, I can’t help but smile and mentally applaud every time I hear them.

  Then I feel guilty as a Pharisee at a pork festival.  I can rationalize with the best of them, but it’s pretty hard to reconcile my love of Lola with “Whatever things are pure…” I feel similarly conflicted about other aspects of pop culture that I participate in on a regular basis. Being in the world but not of the world. Easier said than done – or is it? Jesus and I have been walking the road together for thirty-seven years, and I still find it difficult to walk this particular line. It affects everything in my life, from my relationships to my writing. So what’s a girl to do? I’ll think about this some more in my next post, but in the meantime, I am interested in your thoughts. Sing it with me now, “Luh, luh, luh, luh, Lola!” 

(Hear the song: Lola )