With a poet's eye for detail and a knack for storytelling, Lou Reed's best songs crafted narratives that depicted the underbelly of society, its misfits and outcasts. With his Brill Building background, Reed married a natural tunesmith's grasp of melody to lyrics that tackled themes of addiction, alienation, love and urban decay.
Reed's occasional forays into the upper echelons of the pop chart might have kept the wolf from the door ("Without it, who knows, maybe I’d be digging a ditch somewhere," he said of Walk In The Wild Side), but there's plenty of evidence for his genius elsewhere. Here are just 12 examples.
