“Walk on the Wild Side” by Lou Reed

"Walk on the Wild Side" is the song that sneaked the New York underground onto daytime radio. Lou Reed cut it for Transformer, his second solo album, released on RCA in 1972, with David Bowie and Mick Ronson producing, and it went out as a double A-side with "Perfect Day".

Reed's lyric is a roll call of the characters who drifted into Andy Warhol's Factory: Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, Joe Dallesandro, Jackie Curtis and Joe Campbell, the one he dubs "Sugar Plum Fairy". Each verse sketches somebody's road into New York City, and along the way he talks, cool as you like, about transgender lives, drugs, hustling and oral sex, subjects that were strictly off-limits for the pop charts of the day. The genius is the delivery: Reed half-speaks it like a man telling you gossip at the end of the bar, never shocked, never preaching.

The music is just as sly. Herbie Flowers lays down the bass on both double bass and electric, John Halsey keeps the drums feather-light, the Thunder Thighs coo the backing vocals, and Ronnie Ross's baritone sax curls through it like cigarette smoke. It got heavy airplay, climbed to 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 early in 1973, and became Reed's biggest hit, his signature song and an anthem for the counterculture.

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