I knew what you were thinking. Alllllllll along, I knew it. “Gee, wonder which artist he’s gonna pick? Betcha it rhymes with Lob Lylan!” (Cue laughter and general knee-slapping.) Well, you know what? Not today. Today, I’m throwing you a curveball. And not just any old curveball, either. Maybe the most gloriously chaotic, vibrating, raging comet of a curveball ever to grace a 45. White Light/White Heat is a proto-punk gem coming at you all the way from 1968, before the Sex Pistols knew what sex was. (Okay, okay, I made that up, but it might as well be true.) Point being, this is some real primitive shit.

I’d like to think it’s obvious, even to the untrained ear, that this isn’t your grandma’s pop single. It’s absolutely drenched in fuzz; you can only barely make out what the hell Lou Reed is even saying at any given moment. Barely identifiable among the roaring din are the cymbals of Moe Tucker, who, to quote a phrase, is wailing on the crash cymbal like it owes her money. The bass, acting here as a percussion instrument, keeps steady time throughout the song, lending it a primal on-the-beat thrust, the kind favored by contemporary Ginger Baker. All this gives the listener the impression that the Velvet Underground isn’t interested in creating coordinated music so much as they are in astonishing their audience, as wholly and convincingly as possible. The result is one of the few songs in existence whose listening experience is actually cheapened, rather than enriched, by a set of high-end headphones. Go ahead. Rummage through your attic and retrieve your shitty Walkman headphones from 1990 with one side half-dead. THAT’s how this song oughtta be listened to.

Ultimately, I picked this song to reverse my own self-typecasting and prove that (gasp!) I listen to music besides Bob Dylan. Enjoy White Light/White Heat. I sure do. Greatly.

Till last minute I was confused about what song choose for the record club, i was stuck between a Bollywood song and this one, but ended up deciding on this one. This is a song that takes me down memory lane, I remember i first heard this song in 201, during the summertime and instantly fell in love with it. My sisters and I would listen to this song on repeat for days! This was the first song that i have heard of Lana Del Rey, and then started listening to other songs too. When I heard this song in the Great Gatsby, it gave me another reason to love it even more, because I really admired that movie, and it perfectly sits with the 1900s setting as well.

One reason I love this song is because it gives an old era vibe, and i’ve always admired the songs of that era so this was something different. It was a present singer, making songs that made it seem like they were from the 60s or 70s. This song is so melismatic and airy, the way she sings it really sets the mood of summer, or like she’s flying or on the clouds.Her voice is so smooth throughout the entire song. The way the instruments are being played in the back also gives off an airy structure. I love how when she sings the part, “O Lord when i get to heaven….”, that’s probably my most favorite part of the song, the whole song sort of rise, the melody becomes louder. And then calms down at the part, “All that grace, all that body, all that face makes me wanna party….”. Then she rises up again and has a change of tone when she sings the last verse, implicating that the song has ended.

Airy: Lighthearted, graceful

Melismatic: Melismatic’ indicates one end of a spectrum; the other is ‘syllabic’, or one note to each syllable.

Smooth: without breaks between notes; smooth and connected

Melody: A melody, also tune, voice or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity.

Verse: In the countable sense, a verse is formally a single metrical line in a poetic composition.