Excellent article. I was gifted the album “Magic & Loss” from an older co-worker back when I was in high school, jockeying a UDF counter in Cincinnati, Ohio. That album remains one of my great experiences of listening to music in the 1990s.
The empathy in Lou Reed's songs is incredible. Not the empathy of someone who stops and embraces another. He offers no comfort, only the vision of someone with his eyes open, observing the bleak lives that end outside of our sightlines. Has anyone ever heard a song about social services taking away someone's children, and then there is the sound of the children screaming and sobbing? Or how about Caroline singing to her lover (a 1970s word for a 1970s song): "You can hit me all you want to but I don't love you anymore." Or the impoverished child Pedro selling roses for buck and wanting to become a musician so he can make himself disappear? I listened to Berlin and New York nonstop as a researcher at Travis County Adult Probation. One time in Travis County, a social service agency worker convinced a mentally ill pregnant woman who was in our mental health unit to give her child up for adoption (even though this woman wanted so badly to be a mother). Because she loved her child, she did give him up for adoption, and days after leaving the hospital, killed herself from the pain of that sacrifice. Her child is growing up never knowing how much his bio mom loved him. Not that this adopted child would necessarily want to know the answer to "Did my bio mom really love me?" Lou Reed is the only rock star with the words to encompass these realities.
Lou Reed didn't make Berlin to entertain us. He did it to tell the truth--the most uncomfortable truths, "The Kids" is hard to listen to--as it should be. What you witnessed is so heartbreaking, and nearly any other songwriter wouldn't go near it. It's a lot to take on, and failing at it would be a hard thing to witness. But that's what Lou was all about. There is also nothing like Magic and Loss. If you love someone who is dying of cancer, you might want distraction. But if you want to hear someone who will really go there and get to the way you're feeling, it's on that album like nothing else I know. It's hard to be here sometimes, and Lou Reed, who didn't care too much on a one on one level, cared in a deeper way by giving us those songs.
Excellent article. I was gifted the album “Magic & Loss” from an older co-worker back when I was in high school, jockeying a UDF counter in Cincinnati, Ohio. That album remains one of my great experiences of listening to music in the 1990s.
The empathy in Lou Reed's songs is incredible. Not the empathy of someone who stops and embraces another. He offers no comfort, only the vision of someone with his eyes open, observing the bleak lives that end outside of our sightlines. Has anyone ever heard a song about social services taking away someone's children, and then there is the sound of the children screaming and sobbing? Or how about Caroline singing to her lover (a 1970s word for a 1970s song): "You can hit me all you want to but I don't love you anymore." Or the impoverished child Pedro selling roses for buck and wanting to become a musician so he can make himself disappear? I listened to Berlin and New York nonstop as a researcher at Travis County Adult Probation. One time in Travis County, a social service agency worker convinced a mentally ill pregnant woman who was in our mental health unit to give her child up for adoption (even though this woman wanted so badly to be a mother). Because she loved her child, she did give him up for adoption, and days after leaving the hospital, killed herself from the pain of that sacrifice. Her child is growing up never knowing how much his bio mom loved him. Not that this adopted child would necessarily want to know the answer to "Did my bio mom really love me?" Lou Reed is the only rock star with the words to encompass these realities.
Lou Reed didn't make Berlin to entertain us. He did it to tell the truth--the most uncomfortable truths, "The Kids" is hard to listen to--as it should be. What you witnessed is so heartbreaking, and nearly any other songwriter wouldn't go near it. It's a lot to take on, and failing at it would be a hard thing to witness. But that's what Lou was all about. There is also nothing like Magic and Loss. If you love someone who is dying of cancer, you might want distraction. But if you want to hear someone who will really go there and get to the way you're feeling, it's on that album like nothing else I know. It's hard to be here sometimes, and Lou Reed, who didn't care too much on a one on one level, cared in a deeper way by giving us those songs.
I love Lou Reed: like a fine wine, he ages well
I will age like a fine whine.