Description
Analogue Productions (Atlantic 75 Series)
Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of Atlantic Records!
Final Velvet Underground album featuring founding member and songwriter Lou Reed
Hybrid Stereo SACD
After The Velvet Underground cut three albums for the jazz-oriented Verve label that earned them lots of notoriety but negligible sales, the group signed with industry powerhouse Atlantic Records in 1970.
Label head Ahmet Ertegun supposedly asked Lou Reed to avoid sex and drugs in his songs, and instead focus on making an album loaded with hits. Loaded was the result. It was the groups swan song, with Reed leaving the group shortly before its release. With John Cale long gone from the band, Doug Yule highly prominent (he sings lead on four of the ten tracks), and Maureen Tucker absent on maternity leave, this is hardly a purists Velvet Underground album. Still, AllMusic gives the album 5 Stars and Pitchfork calls it a perfect rock n roll record 40 minutes long, five songs to a side, and not a single wasted note.
Loaded is the sort of proper album that feels like a greatest hits collection, with each track thoroughly inhabiting and mastering a dominant rock archetype. Although the songs Sweet Jane and Rock & Roll distinguished the band as a seminal proto-punk act, The trifecta of Who Loves the Sun, Sweet Jane and Rock & Roll is among the best three-song openings on any rock and roll record, wrote Paste contributor Jeff Gonick
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