Written and Recorded by Lou Reed
Satellite of Love was originally written for the Velvet Underground but that version didn’t make the band’s swan song LP, the aptly named Loaded. Two years later, Lou reimagined the song with help from friends like David Bowie and Mick Ronson, and it was included in his superb collection, Transformer.
Inspired by the excitement of the space age and the satellites launched in the late ‘60s, this song introduces a narrator who likes watching satellites on TV. But this song is about a satellite of love, and love, like a satellite, has a way of orbiting around our hearts and often, never landing – but it is not until the bridge that this becomes clear.
I've been told that you've been bold
With Harry, Mark and John
Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday through Thursday
With Harry, Mark and John
It’s heartbreaking. Just a moment ago we were watching TV and contemplating parking lots on Mars, but the focus quickly goes from heavenly bodies to the earthly bodies being explored by our narrator’s lover.
While the three chords used in the bridge are all played in the verse and chorus, it’s all about the arrangement and execution here. The music becomes simpler, more playful, and theatrical, even childlike. The phrasing is staccato compared to the more patient vocal delivery in the verses and chorus. The bridge’s tonal change seems to mock the narrator’s discovery of his lover’s infidelity. It’s uncomfortable, and a little weird, but this is how someone feels when a lover steps out: isolated and anxious while everyone else is having the time of their life. From here, the narrator can only accept this fate and goes back to watching those satellites on TV.
Lou Reed is one of my heroes. A fellow “Coney Island Baby,” we were born in the same Brooklyn hospital and raised two Long Island towns apart. While I grew up a few decades after Lou, I’ve always felt connected to his worldview and musical approach to expressing it. Long Island is right next to “the city” but there is enough of a distance where even the coolest of us Nassau and Suffolk kids still felt like outsiders. And that was Lou, a definitive figure in late 60s and 70s coolness, but always the voice of an outsider.
-MJK
Satellite of Love was originally written for the Velvet Underground but that version didn’t make the band’s swan song LP, the aptly named Loaded. Two years later, Lou reimagined the song with help from friends like David Bowie and Mick Ronson, and it was included in his superb collection, Transformer.
Inspired by the excitement of the space age and the satellites launched in the late ‘60s, this song introduces a narrator who likes watching satellites on TV. But this song is about a satellite of love, and love, like a satellite, has a way of orbiting around our hearts and often, never landing – but it is not until the bridge that this becomes clear.
I've been told that you've been bold
With Harry, Mark and John
Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday through Thursday
With Harry, Mark and John
It’s heartbreaking. Just a moment ago we were watching TV and contemplating parking lots on Mars, but the focus quickly goes from heavenly bodies to the earthly bodies being explored by our narrator’s lover.
While the three chords used in the bridge are all played in the verse and chorus, it’s all about the arrangement and execution here. The music becomes simpler, more playful, and theatrical, even childlike. The phrasing is staccato compared to the more patient vocal delivery in the verses and chorus. The bridge’s tonal change seems to mock the narrator’s discovery of his lover’s infidelity. It’s uncomfortable, and a little weird, but this is how someone feels when a lover steps out: isolated and anxious while everyone else is having the time of their life. From here, the narrator can only accept this fate and goes back to watching those satellites on TV.
Lou Reed is one of my heroes. A fellow “Coney Island Baby,” we were born in the same Brooklyn hospital and raised two Long Island towns apart. While I grew up a few decades after Lou, I’ve always felt connected to his worldview and musical approach to expressing it. Long Island is right next to “the city” but there is enough of a distance where even the coolest of us Nassau and Suffolk kids still felt like outsiders. And that was Lou, a definitive figure in late 60s and 70s coolness, but always the voice of an outsider.
-MJK
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