Lou Reed “Sally Can’t Dance” 1974. Today, March 2nd, would have been Lou Reed’s 80th birthday (b. 1942, d. 2013). Sally Can’t Dance was Reed’s fourth studio LP; it went to #10 in the US, his highest charting solo record. Despite that, it was not critically well-received: there wasn’t a big hit like “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” (from Transformer, 1972) and Reed himself was “was disappointed in its production and the treatment of the songs. Reed remarked, ‘It seems like the less I’m involved with a record, the bigger a hit it becomes. If I weren’t on the record at all next time around, it might go to Number One.’ (Wiki). Even more contemporary reviews pretty much pan it, calling it “sodden [and] overblown…the worst studio album of Reed’s career; Metal Machine Music [an album of droning feedback] may have been a lot more annoying, but at least he was trying on that one.” (Allmusic) It’s not that bad! It’s mostly blues-rock and not overly exciting (sodden on “Ennui” and overblown on the title track “Sally Can’t Dance“), but I do like the glam Bowie-ish swagger of “N.Y. Stars” and the darkness of “Kill Your Sons” which is about when his parents sent him to a psych ward when he was a teen.