“Waiting for the Man” by Lou Reed

Lou Reed wrote "I'm Waiting for the Man" for the Velvet Underground, and it first surfaced on their 1967 debut, The Velvet Underground & Nico: the story of a man trying to score heroin in Harlem, laid out plainly. The band cut it in May 1966 at TTG Studios during a stay in Hollywood, in the same run of sessions that produced "Venus in Furs" and "Heroin".

Critics file it under garage rock and proto-punk. AllMusic's Dave Thompson heard "chunky guitar, clunking piano, and jackhammer drums" behind Reed's half-sung, half-spoken vocal, and Reed himself once called it "a love song about a man and the subway". Reed's is the only name on the writing credit, words and music both.

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