Stupid Man

I’m the biggest Lou Reed fan, but there are some of his albums that I can’t listen to at all, and The Bells is one of them. While not as excruciating as the work he did in the immediate wake of quitting drugs, it’s less …

Street Hassle

Only Lou Reed can set out to write a great rock monologue that could’ve been written by Raymond Chandler or William Burroughs, and then actually achieve exactly that. Anyone else who said that would look like a pretentious asshole. Lou Reed was an asshole with …

Strawman

“Does anybody need another politician, caught with his pants down, money sticking out of his hole?” I really hate that this question, and all of the others Lou Reed asked, has traveled intact to us through time, as though time were in fact a flat …

Spit It Out

Good advice. It’s weird to find a good pep talk on an obscure record from 1986, but it seems that most of what Lou Reed was writing about in those years hasn’t changed by much. If anything, life is even more fraught by instability and …

Smiles

What is up with Americans and their compulsive habit of making appeasing grimaces at one another? They’re like a troop of stressed-out Chimpanzees. Well, at least Lou Reed is a man after my own heart. You don’t see him walking around catching flies in his …

Smalltown

“There’s only one good thing about a small town, there’s only one good use for a small town – you hate it, and you know you have to leave.” There’s only one valid statement about small towns, and Lou Reed just said it. Lou was …

Sick of You

“They ordained the Trumps” sang Lou Reed in 1989 “The President’s dead, no one can find his head, it’s been missing now for weeks.” Well, it’s our loss and Lou’s good luck that he didn’t live to see what a zoo this place has become. …

Shooting Star

If I didn’t know Lou Reed any better, I’d think that this was one of those fist-pumping inspirational songs about being, you know, a shooting star. I also can’t help but notice a mild similarity to Bad Company’s song Shooting Star, which had been a …

She’s My Best Friend

I’ve always thought that for all of his fame, Lou Reed remained underrated in many regards. Obviously, there’s the inarguable impact of the Velvet Underground, which makes Reed one of the many godparents of punk; the hit-yielding Transformer phase; the many years of love letters …

Satellite of Love

Every great record has a narrative. Only the most ambitious concept albums have a narrative imposed by the artist, but every great record has a narrative that is imagined by the listener. Because a great record takes you on a journey, which becomes a story …