When Lou Reed released Metal Machine Music in 1975, many people were confused. Many more were upset, feeling that they were tricked or cheated somehow. The album was Reed’s foray into avant-garde industrial metal, pure chaos on a double LP, and many fans were not having it.

How did Metal Machine Music become one of the most inaccessible albums ever? When it was released, reports stated that more than 100,000 copies had been sold. However, shortly after, it became one of the most returned albums in RCA’s history. In response, the label pulled the album from distribution.

But what if Lou Reed’s experimental and isolating album was actually a purposeful work of art? While fans complained and critics generally panned the album for being unlistenable, what if Reed had been making a deliberate statement all along?

Reed purposefully included allusions to Beethoven’s “Eroica” and “Pastoral” symphonies among the noise and feedback. This element particularly captured producer Steve Albini, as he was quoted in a feature by Magnet Magazine in 2022.

“When I lived in Montana in 1977, a friend of mine told me about this weird Lou Reed album that everybody hated but he thought was pretty cool,” Albini told Magnet.

“He played it for me, and I thought it was just totally captivating, really amazing,” he continued. “The thing that we both appreciated about it was that within the noise, there are these little fluttery, beautiful, tiny melodic bits, which are probably part of the generative systems that were put together to make all the sounds. Those sounds may not have been orchestrated or intentional in any way, but were there and no less interesting.”

While Metal Machine Music has been featured on lists of the worst albums ever made and even Q’s Top 10 Career Suicides list, Lou Reed still held onto the album as his legacy.

“’Metal Machine Music’, that was my supreme act,” he once said, per Magnet Magazine. “If I left a legacy, that would be it. Like, that was my feelings about the whole music industry and everything connected with it. Because I loved that f—ing thing. I don’t give a f–k what they say or what they do, I like that.”

Could Lou Reed’s noise experiment surpass the career-ender allegations? Was it a stroke of compositional and improvisational genius, a look inside Reed’s mind at the time? Or was it simply elaborate payback on Reed’s manager, a contractual fulfillment for RCA, and a way to weed through less-than-enthusiastic fans?

Albini continued to describe Metal Machine Music with particular fondness. “Whatever Lou Reed’s motive for making it, it’s still a really outstanding non-harmonic piece of music,” he said. “I don’t hear ‘Metal Machine Music’ as a feedback-and-improv record; I hear it as a pure sound sculpture. I really enjoy listening to it. It’s not that weird. It’s only weird given that it came out in 1975 and was presented as a pop-music record.” 

Ultimately, according to Reed, “In time, it will prove itself.”

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