The Alternative Number Ones: Lou Reed’s “Dirty Blvd.”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for subscribers only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

Timing is a funny thing. The standard line on the Velvet Underground is a quote generally attributed to Brian Eno: "The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band." The Velvets came along in mid-'60s New York and married driving gutbucket rock 'n' roll to avant-garde drone, a combination that might've never been attempted, or that was at least never done on anything like the Velvets' level. Lou Reed, the band's lead singer and primary songwriter, wrote about drugs and sex and degradation with steely, flat detachment. They made amazing music, but their records sold virtually nothing. Maybe they were 10 or 20 years too early.

A couple of decades after the Velvet Underground's heyday, though, the band served as a key influence on just about every act that was getting airplay on modern rock radio. Tons of bands covered the Velvets, and tons more shouted them out at every opportunity. At that point, the 46-year-old Lou Reed had been a solo artist for a long time, and he'd built up a famously spotty and confounding catalog, veering in wild new directions from album to album. In 1989, when the Velvet Underground's influence was arguably at its peak, Reed tapped into the spidery, tangled sonic aesthetic that he'd helped to invent, and he made what might be his best solo record. With New York, Lou Reed's timing was finally right. The album was one of the greatest critical and commercial successes of Reed's long career, and it gave him his first-ever #1 hit on any Billboard chart.