Along with "Personality Crisis" and "Trash," "Looking for a Kiss" completes the trilogy of essential New York Dolls songs, the three songs on which their reputation was built. From the spoken word opening brazenly plagiarized from the Shangri-Las' "Give Him a Great Big Kiss" to Johnny Thunders' equally shameless copping of Keith Richards' signature riffs, "Looking for a Kiss" is built on stolen parts. It's what the Dolls do with their influences that matters, and what they do is infuse the song with the insouciant brattiness of David Johansen's sneering vocals. Furthermore, the oft-quoted line "Everyone's going to your house to shoot up in your room/Most of them are beautiful but so obsessed with gloom" is an acidic putdown -- over half a decade beforehand -- of what punk and its attendant sub-scenes would become. It's like Johansen and Thunders knew that Siouxsie and the Banshees were coming.
New York Dolls
Looking for a Kiss
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Song Review by Stewart Mason
Appears On
| Year | Artist/Album | Label | Time | AllMusic Rating | |||
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1973 | Universal | 3:18 | ||||
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1981 | Combat Records / ROIR | 3:42 | ||||
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1999 | Cleopatra | 3:26 | ||||
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2000 | Norton | 3:35 | ||||
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2003 | Mercury | 3:20 |
