[Originally published March 19, 2017]
Recently I had the experience of listening to Lou Reed’s 1989 album, New York, unanimously revered among the pretentious and politically correct critics of rock and popular music. I had always been curious about the album due to the glowing reviews that it had received. While being no superfan of Lou Reed, I do count the Velvet Underground albums as favorites and have enjoyed a few of his solo albums from the 70s. I have not listened to a lot of his post-70s albums, but what I have heard was excruciatingly bad (Lulu with Metallica being the stinking worst), all of it bedecked with his stridently non-musical narrator-style “singing” voice which became more pronounced with age. So with a solid familiarity with the man and his media-scripted...