Lola
by The Kinks
- 152
- BPM
- A major
- Key
- 11B
- Camelot
- 48
- Danceability
- 59
- Acousticness
Ray Davies wrote "Lola" in April 1970, the first song he finished after a break to act in the Play for Today film The Long Distance Piano Player. He struggled to find an opening that would sell the song, but the rest came naturally. He knew it would work when his one-year-old daughter crawled around singing the chorus. The Kinks began recording in April. The sessions dragged into May. They tried four or five versions with different beginnings and styles. In May the band's newly auditioned pianist, John Gosling, added piano parts to the backing track, and vocals went on that month too.
The story behind the character is told more than one way. Davies said it began when the band's manager, Robert Wace, spent a night dancing in Paris with a cross-dresser. Drummer Mick Avory pointed to a London acquaintance, Michael McGrath, who took him to drag acts and secret clubs. Dave Davies said he came up with the music, and his brother added the lyrics.
The single came out in the UK on June 12, 1970 and in the US on June 28. It reached number two in Britain and number nine on the Billboard Hot 100. A live version from the album One for the Road came out as a single in 1980, and in the Netherlands it reached number one, as the studio version had in 1970.
Lola runs at 152 BPM, the tempo of hard techno, punk and fast rock. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.58 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 395 ms. It is in A major, Camelot 11B, which shares its notes with F# minor and mixes cleanly with D major and E major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.