Lulu might be the single most disastrous musical collaboration in popular music history. In a world that contains both “Ebony And Ivory” and “Accidental Racist“, that’s saying something.

If you haven’t listened to Lulu, you should give it a single spin. It’s kind of mind-blowing to hear Metallica pound out aimless power chord trudges while a senile-sounding Lou Reed babbles about century-old German plays for even a single song. It’s even more so to hear both parties keep at it for ninety fucking minutes. But after that first slack-jawed listen, Lulu does not merit revisits. Having slogged through it a full three times, I’d know.

As various others have pointed out, Lulu is both a charmingly earnest attempt at transgressive art and a gutsy move, coming as it does from a bunch of older musicians with a lot of money at stake. Both Metallica and Reed could easily have fallen back on more commercially viable sounds. They could’ve recorded conservative albums that would’ve pleased Rolling Stone, sold way more copies, and thrown exactly zero monkey wrenches into the machinery of their careers. Instead, they chose to take a risk, which is laudable. But as an album of music that has to compete with other music for your attention, Lulu flat-out sucks.

(Incidentally, Rolling Stone gave Lulu a 3/5 and favorably compared Reed’s prattling to “the cookie monster vomit that passes for vocals on most metal albums”; Kirk Hammett recently called it “some of the best stuff we’ve done.”)