The 500 - #110 - Loaded - The Velvet Underground

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #110
Album Title: Loaded
Artist: The Velvet Underground
Genre: Rock, Pop, Proto Punk
Recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, USA

Released: November, 1970
My age at release: 5
How familiar was I with it before this week: A couple of songs
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #242, dropping 132 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Sweet Jane

As a teen, I became an avid record shopper. I worked part-time jobs from the age of 14 and always set aside money for my weekend trips downtown to the record stores, especially the used bins at Dr. Disc. Discovering music felt like a pursuit, almost a sport.

Teenage friendships are always a little competitive. We wanted to win at sports, board games, cards, and, perhaps most importantly, we wanted to be the first to uncover a new band. There was real status in putting a record on the turntable at a house party and having it win over the room. It was also humbling to put one on and have someone else switch it off mid-song because the crowd had deemed it lame.

A house party from the 1980s - from the internet, but perfectly
reminiscent of the ones I attended.

With that realization came something stranger -- possessiveness. We wanted the bands we had discovered to succeed...but not too much. We wanted our “finds’ to remain reachable by playing at small, intimate venues, and drifting into the pub next door after a concert to mingle with the crowd. In some unspoken way, we wanted them to remain ours, our special thing, shared only among those who were "in the know".

Marillion, a band I discovered in 1983 was one of those
bands I wanted to keep within my circle of friends.

When a new record from one of “your” bands hit the shelves, it usually came with a complication. A single might slip onto the radio, or a video would start popping up on MuchMusic (Canada's version of MTV). Of course, you were happy to have new material and you wanted the record to sell well enough to keep the band afloat and fund another tour. But what you didn’t want was a hit. Not a real one.

In 1985, Marillion had its first bona-fide hit with Kayleigh.
I was excited for them, but also worried it meant mainstream popularity.

Nothing triggered indignation faster than seeing that music escape your circle. If someone from another clique, one with, in our estimation, terrible taste, suddenly showed up wearing that band’s T‑shirt, it felt like a violation. The voice in your head would scream "Poser!", "Tourist!", "Bandwagon Jumper!" You’d known about this band for years. You’d earned the knowledge that only comes from discovering a rare EP in a dusty record shop or late‑night listens dissecting the lyrics from one of their deepest cuts. Their sudden popularity in the commercial world didn’t feel like success; it felt like theft.

Loaded, the fourth studio release from The Velvet Underground, was conceived as an album full of hits. The band, already close to fracturing, and effectively doing so after the record came out, had been pushed by Atlantic Records to write songs with clear commercial potential. The title works on multiple levels. It is a nod to the slang term (loaded) for intoxication on alcohol or drugs, and a more literal raison d’etre...deliver an album "loaded" with songs that might top the charts.

The Velvet Underground in 1970. (l-r) Doug Yule, Lou Reed,
Sterling Morrison and Maureen (Moe) Tucker.

It didn’t succeed, at least not in the way Atlantic Records had hoped. None of the three singles released from Loaded managed to crack the Top 40. What the band did create, however, was an enormously enjoyable pop record and one that moves easily and pleasantly through multiple genres. It has also steadily grown in stature over time. In retrospect, Loaded sounds less like a failed bid for commercial relevance and more like a quiet triumph, its reputation solidified by the acclaim of critics and its high placement (#110) on Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 2012 list.

Musically, Loaded casts a wide net and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it repeatedly in preparation for this blog post. The album moves comfortably between straightforward rock and roll and gentler pop, drawing heavily on early‑'60s radio sounds that Lou Reed, the band’s primary vocalist and leader, clearly absorbed as a listener long before he became a songwriter. There are traces of garage rock in the lean guitar work, folk‑rock in the conversational vocals, simple chord progressions, and even a touch of country and soul in the album’s looser rhythms and warm harmonies. Unlike earlier Velvet Underground records, which often leaned into confrontation or abstraction, Loaded feels grounded in familiar genres. It’s an album that sounds intentionally approachable, as if the Velvet Underground were testing how close they could move toward the mainstream while still sounding unmistakably like themselves.

Lou Reed played his final show with the Velvet Underground on
August 23, 1970 - before Loaded was released.

So, I can’t help but wonder if there was a teenager like me in 1970. Someone who had discovered The Velvet Underground with their 1967 debut (#13 on The 500), who had grown alongside them through White Light/White Heat (#293) and the self‑titled third record (#316). When that imaginary teen first heard the pop sensibilities creeping into Loaded, did he/she worry that tourists and poseurs and bandwagon jumpers from high school were about to start sporting Velvet Underground T‑shirts, absent‑mindedly humming the melody to Sweet Jane? I want that Velvet fan to know something: You’re not alone. The 1985 version of me feels your pain.