List item: Listen to the 250 greatest albums
Progress: 127/250
Title: Transformer
Artist: Lou Reed
Year: 1972
Position: #76
I had a surreal out-of-body moment when I had my first listen of Transformer. There I was sitting in front of my laptop and peeling the pericarp off of pomelo segments whilst watching my husband play The Witness. Just a typical Saturday night of married life to be honest (ain’t it grand).
It just got me to thinking how this album from 45 years has found itself being weirdly transplanted through time. I guess I had this weird moment of disconnect with Transformer and not some of the other albums because this is an album that is a weird mixture of recognisable, brand new, contemporary and of its time.
So as an album it just seems to float there like a strange thing outside of time. I promise you, I do not and have never done drugs… maybe there was something in the pomelo.
There aren’t a lot of people who will not have heard some version of ‘Perfect Day’ or ‘Walk on The Wild Side’ – the latter song first came into my awareness through the weird parody singing group called Hooray for Everything from The Simpsons. The version that was sung in that episode had been significantly toned down for their young audience, which is a weirdly specific joke that I only now get some 15 years after first seeing that episode.
I guess what I am trying to say, in a roundabout way, is that I really enjoyed this album. It’s got a few throwaway tracks here and there (like ‘Make Up’), but on the whole this has held up extremely well since it was first released 45 years ago, despite some of the casually racist and sexist language.
Before I Kick 