Lou Reed’s Berlin is one of the most beautiful/ depressing albums of all time. A song cycle about a drug-addled romance ending in suicide, Berlin was a bombastic, elegiac flop released one year after the glam hit Transformer. When the song “The Kids,” which includes the line “They’re taking her children away because they said she was not a good mother,” ends, there is a recording of children screaming for their mother. In “Sad Song,” Reed sings, “I’m going to stop wasting my time. Somebody else would have broken both of her arms.”

In 2007, Berlin was finally performed onstage. Berlin: A Performance By Lou Reed, Directed By Julian Schnabel is the visual documentation of this special event and is released this month.

Everyone already knows that each Velvet Underground record is incredible. But wading through Reed’s extensive solo output can be a bit trickier here is another incredible record (besides Transformer and Berlin which you should already own).

Street Hassle (1978)
After the previous pedestrian Rock N’ Roll Heart, many dismissed the original urban rock poet. Then Reed released Street Hassle, a glorious return to form. Most tracks are gritty street anthems, pumped up by a horn section that somehow works. But the piece de resistance is the title track, a beautiful cello-fueled narrative in three movements about a transsexual getting a prostitute and a woman ODing.