“Satellite of Love” by Lou Reed

"Satellite of Love" was the second single from Lou Reed's 1972 album Transformer, but it's older than that: Reed wrote it in 1970 while still in the Velvet Underground, and the band cut a demo during the sessions for Loaded that summer that never made the record. On Transformer, David Bowie and Mick Ronson produced it with Reed and dressed it up gorgeously.

The song watches a man watching a satellite launch on television while his mind curdles with jealousy over a girlfriend who's been cheating. Ronson plays piano and recorder, Herbie Flowers adds tuba, Klaus Voormann plays bass and John Halsey drums, and Bowie's backing vocals soar skyward like a flare going up. It stalled at 119 in the US back then, but it became a fixture of Reed's shows and compilations.

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