I remember when Lulu was announced back in 2011. At that time I was listening to indie and classic rock, so I wasn’t really following either Metallica’s or Lou Reed’s career. However, the news immediately caught my attention. Lou Reed and Metallica? Collaborating together? On a double album based on a German play written over a century ago, no less? It was more baffling than anything else Lou Reed had done, and that’s saying a lot.
I tried to keep an open mind. Both Metallica and Lou Reed were brilliant musical artists, and although they’d both had weak albums, what bands don’t? Some Metallica songs aren’t very far from the punkish music that Reed made with the Velvet Underground, and Reed himself claimed to have invented heavy metal. Besides, Metallica had already collaborated with an unlikely partner – the San Francisco Symphony – on S&M, and that album was awesome! So, for all intents and purposes, Lulu ought to have been great. Even rumors about tense recording sessions plagued with street fights between Reed and Kirk Hammett couldn’t quell the hopes of many.
Then Warner Bros. released Lulu’s first single “The View,” giving fans a taste of what the album sounded like. They spat it right back out. Between the boring musical backing, Lou Reed’s tenth-grade poetry slam vocals (“worship someone who actively des-piiises yoouu…”), and James Hetfield’s bizarre contributions (“I am the root! I AM THE TABLE!”), “The View” boded ill for what would follow.
Then Lulu dropped – and fell – on Halloween 2011, wrapped in an unflattering cover and greeted by widespread confusion and vitriol. It might have been okay if the album was mediocre or just bad, but it wasn’t just bad. It was a fucking travesty. The band sounded surprisingly lifeless, churning out generic metallic riffs that they could’ve written in their sleep, though they couldn’t have hoped to match the lifelessness in Reed’s aged voice. James Hetfield’s few vocal spots couldn’t redeem Reed’s excesses; in fact, they probably spurred them on more than anything. When Hetfield belts out “SMALL TOWN GIRL!” in “Brandenburg Gate,” nobody applauded. They just laughed.
That’s not to say that Reed was any better at poetry. Ostensibly, the lyrics relate to Frank Wedekind’s two plays about Lulu, a callous prostitute in 1890s Germany. But really they’re just an excuse for Reed to babble on about whatever the hell’s on his mind at any given moment. It’s telling that “it made me dream of Nosferatu trapped on the isle of Doctor Moreau, oh wouldn't it be lovely” is one of the least embarrassing verses on the record. Little effort was made to connect the music with the words, which might’ve been the point, but a pretty bad point at that. Lou Reed and Metallica barely sound like they’re performing in the same room, “or even on the same planet” as one magazine put it. But don’t worry, when neither artist is playing/singing, badly written string arrangements come to save the day! The one in “Junior Dad” lasts for about 9 minutes, bringing the album to an appropriately shitty close.
Needless to say, Lulu wasn’t particularly well-received. It received mostly negative reactions from critics and fans alike and became one of the worst-reviewed albums of the year. It didn’t sell too well either, barely scraping the Billboard Top 40 and falling off soon thereafter. People couldn’t even latch onto it in a “so bad it’s good” or “so weird it’s funny” way, either, as funny as some parts of “The View” were. To this day, Lulu has a small cult following but isn’t mentioned often by fans of either Metallica or Lou Reed.
However, a group of listeners disagrees with the “popular” opinion. According to them, we just didn’t “get” Lulu. We didn’t hate the album because of its quality; no, we only hated it because it was “avant-garde” and “different.” To their credit, the record-buying public doesn’t have high tolerance for avant-garde or experimental music. Many pieces or artists deemed too “out there” have failed initially, only to become well liked and influential in the years after. These people argue that just because Lulu is widely despised now doesn’t mean it will always be so.
After all, “Fade to Black” was initially poorly received by fans who didn’t want to see Metallica brandish acoustic guitars, and Reed’s Metal Machine Music was called an “album of fart sounds” before becoming a huge influence on noise rock. According to these people, Lulu will be cherished as a classic in the future, when time wears away our expectations and lets us see it for the great music it is. The band members themselves seem to share this viewpoint, with James Hetfield attacking the "fearful people" who "type from their mom’s basement that they still live in.” Hetfield claims the band needed to “spread its wings,” and the fans just wouldn’t let them. Reed has gone on record saying that the album is for “literate people,” which is odd, because most of both bands’ fans had the ability to read and still didn’t like it. Maybe they didn’t like it because they could read; one look at the lyric sheet could turn a lot of people off.
But those people have a point. Maybe we really didn’t like Lulu because we didn’t expect or want it, and maybe it’ll be liked – and if not liked, then at least respected – for its avant-garde qualities in the future, like they say. Let's say you're one of those people.
This article is for you.
Look, I’m a big Velvet Underground fan. I love Throbbing Gristle, and they’re pretty out there. Why don’t I like Lulu? It couldn’t possibly be because the album stinks, could it? No, it’s because I just don’t “get” it. I’m not open (or literate) enough to appreciate the album’s quality because I’m fearful of new and challenging music. I'm not willing to let artists try something "avant-garde." Well, what does that even mean anymore?
“Avant-garde” means “vanguard” in French. The dictionary definition describes something which is ahead of its time, innovative, experimental, applying new artistic techniques, radical, daring, unorthodox, and going beyond that which is widely accepted. Now that’s a pretty broad definition, but if I had to pick out the gist, I’d boil it down to “experimental” and “innovative.” I think that’s fair. Look at Duchamp’s Fountain: it experimented with techniques (no one had presented a urinal as a piece of art), and it started the field of conceptual art. Most people agree that it’s a work of avant-garde art. Now let’s judge Lulu by that definition.
There’s a lot of experimentation in Lulu, no doubt. They’ve got that part covered. Innovation is where I get stuck. What’s innovative about it, if anything? All of its musical ideas have been tried and done before, if not often by artists of their kind. Dissonant string arrangements? Penderecki and Berg did it. Spoken word over aggressive music? Slint did it. It’s not bad for Metallica and Lou Reed to take influences from prior artists – that’s what avant-garde works do, inspire other artists ahead of their time – but I wish they had done something interesting or fresh with those influences, instead of offering the worst possible example of experimental music.
I guess it might be innovative in the way that a mainstream metal band has never made such an unexpected release, or dared to inject abstract poetry and atonality into their music. Technically, Lulu broke ground. In that case, though, the music itself isn’t “avant-garde”; the fact that the two artists collaborated is the only thing truly avant-garde about it.
Of course, much avant-garde music is challenging to listen to. The works of Steve Reich, John Zorn, the Residents, John Cage, and Frank Zappa come to mind. Reich’s “Come Out” might be seen as the biggest endurance test in music. Lulu is indeed a challenging listen, especially when it comes to album closer “Junior Dad,” which could be an even bigger endurance test than “Come Out,” what with its 19 minutes of jamming and string wanking.
I like to think, though, that great avant-garde music at least rewards the listener for hearing it. I can’t objectively argue that “Come Out” is a great work; obviously, a lot of people will hate it and stop at 1 or 2 minutes in, and that’s fine. If you choose to listen to it all the way through, though, you can’t deny that the repetition becomes hypnotic, even entrancing after a while – maybe annoying and monotonous too, but still interesting. Sometimes it sounds like a primitive techno song, so it has the added bonus of being influential on later art forms.
I’d argue that Portishead’s Third is avant-garde in a lot of ways; it contains harsh uses of distortion, unexpected changes in musical structure and rhythm, odd time signatures, dissonant instrumentation, “found” sounds, and an atonal saxophone solo, elements that are too “weird” or unorthodox to be found in pop music. On top of that, it's a radical departure from the mellow trip-hop music Portishead used to make. That album reached the Top 10 and was critically acclaimed. It’s not like people are incapable of enjoying or “getting” avant-garde music. I’d also argue that Third is an immensely rewarding album. It reveals new things to the listener with repeated plays, and it never fails to be interesting. It also displays good musicianship and composition, which all artists – not just avant-garde artists – should know. Plus, the lyrics don’t suck.
That’s why I can never get into Lulu. It’s not rewarding, it’s punishing. Even if I allow for avant-garde experimentation, the music isn’t good. As someone who appreciates avant-garde, I get mad when people accuse others of “fear” and small-mindedness when they say they don’t like this album. Experimenting with new techniques doesn’t mean you don’t have to try with your art. You need to see what does and doesn’t work, and some experimentation just doesn’t. Lulu is evidence of this, and I hate seeing it defended on account of its avant-garde-ness. I wouldn’t be so mad if this excuse was used solely for Lulu, but it’s not. Music, films, artworks, and even games have been praised – often by critics – not for actual quality, but by simple virtue of being “avant-garde.” Those things can also be slammed solely for being “avant-garde,” which is unfortunate, but no more so.
True to form, a good number of critics praised Lulu. They’re not wrong for doing so, but I think one of the reviews speaks volumes about the album’s audience. Rolling Stone gave the album three stars out of five and wrote that “[Lou Reed] is still preferable to the Cookie Monster vomit that passes for vocals on many metal records.” So if you like Lulu, you obviously don’t listen to much metal music.
All I’m saying is, it’ll be a sad day when the term “avant-garde” is widely accepted as an excuse to heap praise on an artless piece of shit.