“Dirty Blvd.” by Lou Reed

"Dirty Blvd." is the snarling heart of New York, Lou Reed's 1989 album, his fifteenth solo record, and it's as blunt as a brick through a limo window. Reed sets the city's poor against its rich over just three chords, a G-D-A-D cycle that he and Mike Rathke hammer on electric guitars while Rob Wasserman's double bass and Fred Maher's drums keep the whole thing lean and mean.

Reed wrote it alone and sings it like a street-corner reporter who's had it up to here. Dion drifts in on backing vocals, a sweet ghost floating over the grime. It topped Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart for four weeks, and it turned up on later live albums, Reed even playing it with David Bowie at Bowie's 50th birthday show in 1997.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.