How Lou Reed Shaped These 4 Iconic Singers

Lou Reed’s albums didn’t top the charts. But his influence, as well as that of his band The Velvet Underground, is far more profound than commercial success. It’s not hard to trace Reed’s fingerprints on artists operating left of mainstream music’s center. And Reed’s greatest legacy might just be the number of groundbreaking musicians that The Velvet Underground inspired to start a band. Let’s look at four iconic singers shaped by Lou Reed.

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Julian Casablancas (The Strokes)

Listening to The Strokes’ debut album, Is This It, reveals a history lesson in New York’s punk and art rock scene. And you probably don’t get to punk without The Velvet Underground, and the influence of Lou Reed’s band on The Strokes is evident in early songs like “New York City Cops”. Julian Casablancas employed Reed’s talk-singing style and offered his own songs with detachment. Reed’s masterpiece, Transformer, provides the blueprint for detached tenderness, like in “Perfect Day”. You can easily imagine Casablancas’s slacker croon covering Reed’s glam ballad.

Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth)

To me, Sonic Youth is the third chapter in New York underground music, behind The Velvet Underground and the CBGB punk bands. Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo, and Steve Shelley brought noise rock to mainstream audiences and helped lead the alternative music surge of the late 80s and early 90s. Moore’s melodic instincts made Sonic Youth’s experiments more accessible, and his voice sounds like Reed’s proto-punk threading its post-punk form. The beauty-and-beast blend of Moore’s soft singing and his band’s abrasive chaos is best heard in “Teen Age Riot”.

Lana Del Rey

When Reed sang gently on “Perfect Day”, “Satellite Of Love”, and “Pale Blue Eyes”, the sentiment felt aloof. Distant from the heartbreak and tenderness. Lana Del Rey was born in New York City, but there’s a Valley girl vibe to her singing. But it’s not a lack of emotion. You get the sense that she’s partly numbed from a chaotic world, relationships, and an uncertain future. Reed’s poetry was the heartbeat of his songs, and Del Rey also writes poetically, but in a stream-of-consciousness style. In “Brooklyn Baby”, Del Rey sings: “Well, my boyfriend’s in a band / He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed.” She could be having a conversation with a friend at the neighborhood bar. Reed’s songs always feel like conversations, too.  

Brandon Flowers (The Killers)

In the early 2000s, American music had a garage rock revival of “The” bands, and The Killers released one of the best-selling albums of the period. Led by Brandon Flowers, whose vocal delivery echoed Reed’s conversational style. Musically, The Killers mirrored the post-punk of Joy Division and the new wave of New Order. But Flowers formed pop songs from dramatic tales that owe a lot to Reed. Flowers said The Strokes’ debut caused The Killers to discard everything they had worked on up to that point. Apart from “Mr. Brightside”. It changed their band, and it wouldn’t have happened without Lou Reed.

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