YMMV / Lou Reed

• Archive Panic: Has a colossal catalogue, especially if you want to include his work with the Velvet Underground
• Broken Base: Mistrial is much more synth and digital oriented than this other records, fans of his either enjoy what he did with this album or try to ignore it entirely.
• Bile Fascination: Metal Machine Music somehow managed to sell 100,000 copies despite (or perhaps because of) its overwhelmingly negative critical reception, which nearly ruined Lou Reed's credibility as a musician.
• Epic Riff:
  • "Sweet Jane".
  • The bass line on "Walk on the Wild Side," played with both a bass guitar and a stand-up bass because the session bassist realized he'd get paid twice for playing two parts on the song.
• Funny Moments: The idea of Lou Reed being forced to spend a Saturday night alone in "Goodnight Ladies" is absurdly hilarious.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: He was more popular in the U.K. than in his native U.S. Not to mention his popularity in Italy and behind the Iron Curtain.
• Harsher in Hindsight: It might be hard to listen to Le Bataclan '72 after the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, since it happened at the same venue where the album was recorded.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • "Coney Island Baby". Possibly "Perfect Day" too, depending on how you interpret it.
  • Listen to Lou Reed speaking about Václav Havel... consistently referring to him as "President Havel" or "Mr Havel", with no hint of irony in sight.
  • All of the tributes Reed got from fans and the artists he influenced upon his death.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: "Satellite of Love" includes the line, "Satellite's gone way up to Mars/Soon it will be filled with parking cars." That was in 1973. It's been over forty years. No cars on Mars yet.
• Memetic Badass: You will never be as cool as Lou Reed.
• Nightmare Fuel: The music video for "No Money Down", with a Lou Reed animatronic flipping out and tearing its face and jaw off.
• Posthumous Popularity Potential: He was already very well-regarded among critics and musicians, but when Reed died in 2013, tributes poured out from nearly every corner of the Internet.
• Questionable Casting: Most people are confused by his collaboration with Metallica on Lulu.
• Signature Song: Walk on the Wild Side", full stop. The other most popular songs by him are "Perfect Day" and "Satellite of Love" for his solo material.
  • For his songs with The Velvet Underground, the ones more associated with him are easily "Pale Blue Eyes" and "Sweet Jane".
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: Yes, even Reed has an example. "Junior Dad" could practically be a Sigur Rós song. With the Reality Subtext of it being the last song on his last album, though, it's also a Tear Jerker.
• Tear Jerker:
  • A whole Tear Jerker album with Berlin, a Concept Album about a doomed romantic couple with a woman Driven to Suicide after her children are taken away.
  • Lulu qualifies as well, especially with the Reality Subtext of it being Reed's last album. Within the context of the album, "Little Dog" is probably the most obvious example.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The music video for "No Money Down" shows an amazingly creepy Lou Reed animatronic lip-syncing the song. It then proceeds to tear its face apart, putting into question how unintentional this is.
• Vindicated by History: Upon release, Berlin was almost universally panned by critics, and called "a disaster" by Rolling Stone, who would go on to include the album in their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time many years later. The same goes for Metal Machine Music, which has received some vindication for being a progenitor to Noise Rock and Industrial. Time will tell whether the same thing happens for Lulu, although it's perhaps worth noting that David Bowie considered it Reed's best album, and drew heavy inspiration from it for his own final album, ★ (which itself was highly acclaimed even before Bowie's death).

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