10 Bizarre Reasons Songs Were Banned From The Radio

Lola is the first single released from The Kinks' eighth studio album, 1970's Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One (there isn't a Part Two, sadly), detailing the narrator's experience with a transgender woman at a nightclub. Although the subject matter of the song may have seemed risqué to listeners in the 1970s, the BBC took issue with Lola in another way.

BBC Radio policy forbids product placement in their broadcasts, and apparently, the line "Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-Cola" falls under this category. One utterance of a brand name was all that it took to get Lola prohibited from the airwaves back in the day.

This was so large of an issue that vocalist Ray Davies had to postpone dates on the band's American tour so that he could fly from New York to London (a 6000-mile round trip, incidentally) to re-record the one line, changing "Coca-Cola" to "cherry cola". This change is still present on some versions of the song, and is normally the version that is broadcast today.

Moral of the story: Write whatever song you like, but don't give shout-outs to your favourite soft drinks.