{"id":970054,"date":"2026-05-19T02:32:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T02:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/970054\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T02:32:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T02:32:17","slug":"the-1933-song-lou-reed-wanted-for-himself-i-wish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/970054\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1933 song Lou Reed wanted for himself: “I wish”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lou<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Album Cover<\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t any such thing as a perfect song, but Lou Reed<\/a>\u2018s \u2018Perfect Day\u2019 might be the closest thing to it. <\/p>\n

Of course, not just because of its aptly named title. We don\u2019t deal in reductives here, so simply labelling it as perfect because of its connotation to a hypothetical perfect day is very low on the list. No, the song is perfect<\/a> because of how it is rooted in the careful balance of emotional feelings, which question the true essence of happiness, a feeling buoyed by a melodic composition that is beautiful and haunting in equal parts. <\/p>\n

Near musical perfection was Reed\u2019s speciality, however. Rarely was he found turning in something mediocre, and so his discography often became the envy of the music world. <\/p>\n

Even though they were close friends and collaborators<\/a>, the great enigmatic Bowie couldn\u2019t help but be envious of Reed\u2019s work, once saying, \u201cAnyone who heard Lou sing \u2018Junior Dad\u2019 will never forget the experience of that song, torn out of the Bible. This was rock & roll taken to whole new levels.\u201d<\/p>\n

But like most geniuses, Reed had the sort of troubling complex that prevented him from ever enjoying his own work. His gaze was consistently focused forwards and that meant he barely had time to ponder on the contemporary greatness of his own music. Ultimately, that\u2019s what forced him to abruptly leave The Velvet Underground or cascade into the worlds of experimental music with Metal Machine Music<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He was constantly searching for something that maybe he would never find himself, but only in the work of others. Because, despite the countless songs he had written himself, it was the work of someone else that he regarded as the one idea he wished was his. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a big deal to lay bare those emotions on a pop record; only a handful of performers have dared do it so consistently,\u201d he once answered, when questioned about the essence of musical genius. It\u2019s funny because it\u2019s hard to know whether he was talking about himself there, or at least his peers around him. He made a habit of making his distaste for everyone clear, and so it was a wonder if anything contemporary pleased him. <\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clearly, it didn\u2019t because he was either so intently focused on the future, or in this case, the past, harking back to 1933 to find a song that he wished was in fact his. He continued, \u201cYou\u2019re confused because you\u2019re thinking about pop music and pop records, or rock \u2018n\u2019 roll,\u201d Reed said. \u201cThink about Brecht and Weill, \u2018Seven Deadly Sins\u2019. Boy, now I wish I had come up with that one first.\u201d<\/p>\n

The composition for a 40-minute ballet<\/a> shows exactly where Reed\u2019s brain was at in terms of processing music. Despite being the pioneer of rock and roll, he had already grown out of it and was looking back in order to figure out how to move forward. Of course, he would never create anything like \u2018Seven Deadly Sins\u2019, but it was the constant pursuit of such that made him the artist he was.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Album Cover There isn\u2019t any such thing as a perfect song, but Lou Reed\u2018s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3936],"tags":[270676,270677,7803,77,43999,269,16,15],"class_list":["post-970054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-1930s","tag-270677","tag-ballet","tag-entertainment","tag-lou-reed","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116598902777060222","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=970054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=970054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=970054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=970054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}