![]() ![]() The line breaks the fourth wall – a self-reflexive, look-at-me-being-cute gag that cues up the BVs – and also works as a cynical commentary on dated, formulaic radio-friendly songwriting, made all the more ridiculous by the fact that backing vocalists Thunderthighs were actually, yup, all white women.īuy A Walk On The Wild Side on Amazon. Possibly, Lou used the phrase “coloured girls” as a deliberate anachronism. WOTWS was precision-engineered to be a glorious slice of subversion, putting lyrics about transsexuals, blowjobs and suicide to gentle muzak that people could play to their mums. I mean: in 1972, Lou Reed was not known for tender acoustic songs, with jazzy upright bass and soulful backing vocals. Lou did use the word “coloured” waaay after its sell-by date (well, maybe not waaay after, but it was definitely best before 1972), and he probably did it deliberately, the little tinker. No-one needs some old white guy attempting to mansplain WOTWS, so let’s get this over with quick and hope no-one notices, yeah? But in a fascinating plot twist, recent years have seen the song called out for being possibly transphobic and featuring outdated racist language with the line, “And the coloured girls sing…” ![]() Recap: When it came out, WOTWS was considered outrageous because of its gay and trans-positive lyrics. The question is: Can we still like Walk On The Wild Side or should we be OUTRAGED and DISGUSTED by Lou Reed’s culturally insensitive classic? Like Lou, Algren was feted for writing about the underbelly of American life – his most famous novel The Man With the Golden Arm was about gambling and heroin addiction – and famed for having a fling with feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir.īut forget the book and let’s focus on the real masterpiece. Lou Reed named his song after literary bad boy Nelson Algren’s novella. A Walk On The Wild Side A Walk On The Wild Side And we can all agree on that at least.īuy For Whom the Bell Tolls at Amazon. “War! It’s bloomin’ ‘orrible, innit?” growl Metallica. The lyrics are based on chapter 27 of the book, when El Sordo’s men are trapped on a hilltop by a fascist division until they are (spoiler alert) bombed-to-shit by planes. Metallica’s FWTBT is an angry, unstoppable Statham of a song, with a nightmarish helter skelter riff that sounds like it was built by Escher on a mushroom comedown. Hemingway is still the Patron Saint of manly-men-doing-manstuff – even if there are less of those guys around and even fewer of them reading books – but you’d have to be particularly determined to reduce his work to just Alpha male adventuring: matriarch Pilar is FWTBT’s most memorable character and his characters are deep, dude, in a way that whoever puts words in Jason Statham’s mouth doesn’t even dream of. Hemingway’s fourth novel is about an American who joins a gang of guerillas during the Spanish Civil War, hooks up with the only available woman, gets their gang of comrades blown to pieces and then leads them all on a suicide mission to blow up a bridge. ![]()
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