The Velvet Underground - Loaded - Hybrid Stereo SACD

2024
Final VU Album Featuring Founding Member & Songwriter Lou Reed.
Mastered directly from the Original Master Tape by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time - Rated 242/500.

After The Velvet Underground cut three albums for the jazz-oriented Verve label that earned them lots of notoriety but negligible sales, the group signed with industry powerhouse Atlantic Records in 1970.

Label head Ahmet Ertegun supposedly asked Lou Reed to avoid sex and drugs in his songs, and instead focus on making an album "loaded with hits." Loaded was the result. It was the group's swan song, with Reed leaving the group shortly before its release. With John Cale long gone from the band, Doug Yule highly prominent (he sings lead on four of the ten tracks), and Maureen Tucker absent on maternity leave, this is hardly a purist's Velvet Underground album. Still, AllMusic gives the album 5 Stars and Pitchfork calls it a "perfect rock 'n' roll record — 40 minutes long, five songs to a side, and not a single wasted note."

Loaded is the sort of proper album that feels like a greatest hits collection, with each track thoroughly inhabiting and mastering a dominant rock archetype. Although the songs "Sweet Jane" and "Rock & Roll" distinguished the band as a "seminal proto-punk" act, "The trifecta of 'Who Loves the Sun,' 'Sweet Jane' and 'Rock & Roll' is among the best three-song openings on any rock and roll record," wrote Paste contributor Jeff Gonick.