Lou Reed Lyrics-20 – To always make love by proxy (from “How Do You Think It Feels”) (Now Playing Week 6)

Much of the pop music we heard in the mid-70s was cheerful, bland, and (to borrow a phrase) “pretty vacant.” But this song, with its expressions of gloom and existential angst, was anything but cheerful.    

In this disquieting and haunting track from the album “Berlin,” we get a glimpse of the protagonist’s inner world. And it's certainly not a very attractive or pleasant world.

The only response to the writer’s rhetorical questions is probably “It must feel horrible.”    

While this song reveals an interior world, it always makes me picture a stark, barren scene. A scene as desolate and cold as a De Chirico painting. When listening to this track, you can almost see the empty streets, or peer into the gray, cavernous rooms that line the street. There are no decorations or distractions to take away from the disturbing reality of the situation.

There’s nothing to notice … only the bleak images of the interior that Lou sketches for us in this unsettling and heart-rending song.

How Do You Think It Feels, Lou Reed …

Lou Reed, Anthology of Memorable Lyrics.

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