THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,862) The Velvet Underground — “Pale Blue Eyes”
I hope you weren’t expecting Metal Machine Music! Thís touch of velvet is “possibly one of [Lou] Reed’s finest love songs (that he’d been working on as early as ’65 with [John] Cale), gentle, understated, propelled by the most unassuming tambourine in rock: the[ir third] album’s first real masterpiece”. (Ian Fortnam, https://www.loudersound.com/features/velvet-underground-albums) Until Tomorrow Blog calls it “[t]he best of the band’s more elegant and simplistic style songs” in which “[a] beautiful, yet complex message is conveyed through the lyrics and furthered by a tender and terse solo”. It “can bring you to tears or inspire you, but it still contains a quiet force.” (https://untiltomorrowblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/18/ranking-the-songs-of-the-velvet-underground/)
Joe Jatcko writes:
Appearing on the group’s third album— the first not to feature co-founder John Cale—this song is a study in understatement for a band previously known for their heavy, guitar driven sound. A bittersweet ballad penned by Lou Reed for his first love – who just happened to be married at the time – Reed trades in his usual sarcastic wit for earnestness in one of the bands most beautiful and haunting songs.
https://www.watchmojo.com/amp/articles/top-10-the-velvet-underground-songs
Joe Lynch muses:
Backed by a depressive tambourine (how is that even possible?), muffled guitar and gentle Hammond organ drone, Reed sings about his boundless, and ultimately rebuffed, love for a married woman (which in real life was his first serious love, Shelley Albin, whose hazel eyes he took some poetic liberties with). Nearly every line is emotionally devastating . . . . This isn’t romance; it’s melancholic acquiescence to letting your heart override your brain as you pledge fealty to a lover who, despite your own misgivings and the stringent judgment of the world, has complete power over you. . . . [A] gospel undercurrent runs beneath the temporal concerns, and somehow Reed makes an adulterous liaison seem like the holiest treasure of all.
https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/the-velvet-underground-self-titled-1969-songs-8501516/
“He never really got over her and often begged her to come back to him, if you can believe it. Lou Reed begging a girl? She must have been really something.” (@MelBee128, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aNSH8OdHx2A&list=RDaNSH8OdHx2A&start_radio=1&pp=ygUsVGhlIFZlbHZldCBVbmRlcmdyb3VuZCDigJQg4oCcUGFsZSBCbHVlIEV5ZXOgBwE%3D)
Here is REM:
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