It’s such a stunningly good music album. And that they made it in 65 and 66 when pop music was still so anodyne is all the wilder.

And while it’s deviant and transgressive and druggy and seedy and all of that, that’s not worth much. It’s that Reed manages to find so much humanity in the dark corners of that stuff.

I was just listening to “Venus in Furs”. The verses are S&M stuff that wouldn’t be particularly shocking today, but the chorus is so surprising you’d almost think it was of a different piece. The one-chord drone chugs suddenly into this driving progression and he really writes the final word on sexual degeneracy, just repeating how tiring and wearisome it all is.

“I’ll Be Your Mirror” is as sincere a white pill lyric as you could imagine. A woman fighting to gaze into your soul and comforting you: all is not lost, you’re redeemable.

And the Faustian stuff of “Heroin”…. Such a great lyric. And a Brian Wilsony daring to break all the strictures of rock studio recording.

I see the cultural disrepair caused by infecting pop music with perversion and hopelessness and drugs. But I’ll never not love this album

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