Song · Lou Reed
“Romeo Had Juliette” by Lou Reed
From the album New York (1989)
“Romeo Had Juliette” by Lou Reed appears on 5 radio countdowns from 2 stations between 1999 and 2024. It was first released in 1989 on the album New York. Its best result is #555 on The Best Opening Tracks of All Time. In the combined RockLists rankings it is #4,630 alternative song of all time.
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"Romeo Had Juliette" belongs to New York, the album Lou Reed put out on Sire in January 1989, his fifteenth solo studio record and the one that hauled a flagging solo career back into the light. The recipe was deliberately bare: Reed wanted the music plain so nothing would get between the listener and his blunt words, and here that means two electric guitars, his own and Mike Rathke's, with Fred Maher playing both bass and drums.
Maher also engineered it and co-produced with Reed, and the whole thing stays lean. The album around it did the heavy lifting: "Dirty Blvd." spent four weeks on top of the newly minted Modern Rock Tracks chart, and the record's success went far enough to get the Velvet Underground back together for a world tour.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 1634 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2000 Songs of All-Time (December 1999) | 2000 |
| 2000 | 1634 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2001 Songs of All-Time (December 2000) | 2001 |
| 2001 | 1634 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2002 Songs of All-Time (December 2001) | 2002 |
| 2002 | 1626 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2003 Songs of All-Time (December 2002) | 2003 |
| 2024 | 555 | KEXP | The Best Opening Tracks of All Time | 738 |
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