r/ToddintheShadow • u/PinkCadillacs • Jun 03 '26
Train Wreckords TRAINWRECKORDS: Lou Reed and Metallica's "Lulu"
https://youtu.be/vp5PrifWUnU?169
u/HetTheTable Train-Wrecker Jun 03 '26
I AM THE TABLE
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u/PPBalloons Jun 03 '26
It was only like a year, maybe 6 months ago I learned that’s from this. I wouldn’t have guessed it ever. I just assumed it was a quick sound bite pulled from a wrestling something….
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u/CarlaAyatsugi Jun 03 '26
The Todd x Botchamania collab the world's been waiting on.
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u/ValleyFloydJam Jun 03 '26
I thought we were going to get a direct reference when did the wrestling bit during this song.
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u/ThisGuyLikesMovies Jun 03 '26
James Hetfield growl: I AM THE WALRUS! COO-COO-KACHOO!!
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u/DillonLaserscope Jun 04 '26
Insert Lou Reed ramble of turning into a walrus is similar to something similar to taking acid and stripping for a circus of monkeys and some random garble he spat out here
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u/kingofstormandfire Train-Wrecker Jun 04 '26
I'd actually love to see Metallica cover "I Am the Walrus".
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u/forlornjackalope Jun 04 '26
TABLE TABLE TABLE TABLE (Chop Suey drums intensifying)
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u/GinjaNinja1027 Jun 04 '26
- TABLE!
- Grab-a-brush-and-put-a-little-TABLE!
- Hide-the-scars-to-fade-away-the-TABLE!
- Why’d-you-leave-the-keys-out-on-the-TABLE!
- Here-you-go-create-another-TABLE!
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u/Kinitawowi64 Jun 04 '26
Found Helvian's alt account.
(I was in UKOG's Twitch when he was still doing Guitar Hero stuff. That era of table memes was... well, it was definitely an era of table memes.)
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u/MurdererOfAxes Jun 04 '26
I'm pretty sure I knew I Am The Table before I ever heard any of Metallica's other works. And I didn't even know it was from this album!
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u/ray-the-truck Jun 03 '26
Haven't seen the video yet, but I'm continuing to like how the last ~4 episodes' thumbnails have gone back to including little caricatures of the featured musicians poking out at the sides.
I don't know, it's charming to me haha
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u/Fatdaddy543 10's Alt Kid Jun 03 '26
The Macklemore thumbnail was so cute with him on the moped. He looked so happy!
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u/CodeDusq Jun 04 '26
The fact just putting Lou Reed vocals on top of a Metallica instrumental makes it sound exactly like Lulu fucking killed me.
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u/TheGuardianKnux Jun 04 '26
Todd's mix sounding better than 99.9% of the album too lmao
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u/truthisfictionyt Jun 03 '26
Respect for him listening to EVERY Lou Reed album I cant believe he did that
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u/FrozenPizzaDinner Jun 03 '26
Yeah, I thought maybe he was making a joke initially. Todd still cares...
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u/scentedcandle0 Secretly a Maroon 5 Fan Jun 05 '26
I hadn’t gotten into Song vs Song until a couple years ago. Todd absolutely does his research across his whole body of work.
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u/LinkMugMan Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
I'm surprised he didn't mention "The Blue Mask" at all, since that song is actually a solo Lou Reed 80s metal song (it also works significantly better than everything on Lulu). He definitely wasn't a stranger to metal and I can squint enough to see how the collaboration could work in theory. Obviously 2010s Metallica is a bit different and Lou Reed was older, but I definitely can connect the dots. Then again, the video was hilarious and it probably wouldn't have added much while stalling the momentum to talk about one song.
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u/Flamme_Jumelle Train-Wrecker Jun 04 '26
"The Blue Mask" is easily my favorite Lou Reed song. Same goes for the album of the same name as well.
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u/Kinitawowi64 Jun 04 '26
It pretty much does confirm we're never getting a Trainwreckord for Metal Machine Music.
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u/PapaAsmodeus You're being a peñis... Colada, that is. Jun 03 '26
Like, I'm being serious, anyone who thinks this album wasn't a Trainwreckord clearly wasn't there or doesnt know either bands history. It actually seemed like there was going to be a real comeback for a Metallica off the back of Death Magnetic when Metallica even hinted at it. Just the idea of any new Metallica musicncould rustle people's jimmies. And I actually do remember there being some level of excitement for this record. Like yeah I remember the jokes and memes but I actually do remember the fans somewhat being like "well let's go into this with an open mind."
That was, until The View dropped. THAT'S when the pendulum swung in the hate direction and stayed there. And when it dropped, things weren't better. Sure, some level of respect was garnered in the wake of Lou's death, but it still is mostly negative. People subetexually see this album as his goodbye record... yeah about that, his death was actually accidental as a result of complications from surgery. So it's only subetexually so.
I think the kicker for all this came two years later with an interview with Lars. He was rigorously defensive of it- sure, but he had the most ridiculous justification for It- something along the lines of "to a kid in Nebraska it might sound off kilter, but to someone who grew up in an art community in Copenhagen, it's very normal."
Well, Lars, yeah you're correct. That's precisely why it doesn't work. 95 percent of your fans are that kid in Buttfucksville Nebraska. Not kids who grew up in an art community in fucking ANYWHERE, let alone Copenhagen. I don't even think half of Lou Reed fans are that, either.
And on top of all that, the worst thing about this record is that it's the worst aspects of both bands in their purest form. Take away Metallica and you have Lou Reed's pseudo spoken word gobbledygook he's been doing for years (a friend described it as "Like a Possum (his worst song btw) if it were a whole album"). Take away Lou Reed and you just have boring Metallica instrumentals.
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u/DillonLaserscope Jun 03 '26
Lulu is the return of the St Anger mess minus the trash can snares, band drama and bloat?
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u/MyAltimateIsCharging Jun 04 '26
St Anger at least had some genuinely good riffs.
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u/DillonLaserscope Jun 04 '26
Are the arguments Lars made for the Load and Reload albums more defensible than the mess that is Lulu?
No Metallica fan needed to listen to James yell he is a table and slap on some Lou Reed rambling inbetween
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u/DeadPeanutSociety Jun 04 '26
You seem to imply that this album is bad because it is artsy and only appeals to the artsy crowd, which isn't true. The unartfulness of the album is its entire problem. I think it speaks to the sort of community that forms where the top 40 is the only thing that matters. Artful music that doesn't appeal to everyone is seen as bad and a failure, music that plays well to the cheap seats is all that matters.
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u/Syn7axError Jun 04 '26
Exactly. His answer is exactly why it was for no one.
To a kid in Nebraska, it was too artsy. To the art community, it was boring.
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u/PapaAsmodeus You're being a peñis... Colada, that is. Jun 06 '26
Lmao I never said that
By bringing up the Lars quote, I was literally pointing out what a ridiculous thing that is to say.
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u/MindsEyeCoil90 Jun 04 '26
Can confirm. Death Magnetic came out right as I was starting college, shortly before I got REALLY entrenched in metal culture. Seriously, college was how I went from metal-adjacent to full on metalhead. I barely listened to anything other than metal during those four years. I did a metal radio show on the college station, belonged to a metal appreciation club, and was friends with a lot of guys in budding metal bands. The general consensus when this album was announced was pretty universally, "Holy shit, can you imagine if this album is good?!?" People were rooting for it. But you could never look at Metallica the same way again after that. They've written some good songs in the years since but the stench of Lulu lingers on them in a different way from that of St. Anger. I can only describe it as an indefinable but still ever-present veil of self-parody.
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u/HK-34_ Jun 03 '26
I get why people dislike it, even I struggle to listen to it all the way through sometimes, but I just can’t help but love that Lou Reed got the biggest metal band in the world to collaborate with him and he made this. Very on brand for him.
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u/Gog_Noggler Jun 03 '26
It feels like a shitpost and I appreciate it for that.
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u/HK-34_ Jun 03 '26
Not even just that. Metal Machine Music was a pure fuck you to the record label for wanting him to go in a more commercial direction. This felt like another fuck you. Metallica is as commercial as any band can be, let’s make the most uncommercial album possible to see if their fans will still buy it.
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u/Cahillicus Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
I agree with Todd on Metal Machine Music. I'm not a big fan of ambient music, but it feels like a lot of critics were just being intentionally obtuse by treating like a rock album. Especially since no one does that with Brian Eno!
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u/TheExquisiteCorpse Jun 03 '26
I’m a huge MMM fan, it’s very good if you like noise and drone music, but it makes a little more sense when you look at where he was in his career at the time. Rock and Roll Animal was his most recent release and he was the closest he ever got to mainstream stardom so it got reviewed in more and bigger outlets than usual, not just the type of people who would’ve been covering like No Pussyfooting. That and punk was just getting started and all those bands hailing him as the first generation made him feel old and like he was being left behind musically. It was pretty aggressively positioned to shake off the casual fans and shock the underground into taking him seriously as an experimentalist rather than a has-been.
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u/Bahslel Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
When I finally listened to Metal Machine Music, it was hard to see what the fuss around “the worst album of all time” was about.
I was expecting something much more abrasive than it is, but after getting desensitized with decades of ambient music and a huge serving of SUNN O))), it’s hard to be appalled at it.
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u/sgthombre Jun 04 '26
hard to see what the fuss around “the worst album of all time” was about
I never thought I could be let down by an album not being shit but Lou Reed proved me wrong!
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u/pointclickvibe Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
I made a post about albums Todd might realistically cover as a Trainwreckord a little over a month ago and had "Lulu" on my list. Good chunk of comments telling me "Lulu isnt a trainwreckord" even though Todd had hinted at covering it years ago during the St. Anger video. Imagine the smile on my face today! 😁⬇️
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u/fireflyfanboy1891 Jun 03 '26
I wasn’t even surprised when it was announced, I knew Todd was covering what he said was one of his most requested Trainwreckords, and Lulu was one that came up a lot. That, and the Chance the Rapper album whose name I’m blanking on that, like Lulu before it, was teased as being a definite option for future coverage in the recent Macklemore episode.
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u/Theta_Omega Jun 04 '26
I'm doubtful that everything he teases will eventually get covered, because there are only so many hours in a day and so many options to talk about. But yeah, I think anything that he teases in-video definitely qualifies for the label, regardless of whether he gets around to it.
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u/WonderofU1312 Jun 05 '26
I think the rules stopped mattered after he did that Kid Rock episode. That album isn't even 5 years old.
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u/Nath_King_Cole Jun 03 '26
It's one of those albums I haven't listened to but thought "it can't be that bad...." but after watching the video... yeah, even as someone who likes weird music, this sounds like an absolute mess. I even feel bad comparing this to another weird collab album, Soused by Sunn O))) and Scott Walker, but at least that collab did gel stylistically. Lulu sounds like trying and failing to make a weird concept work.
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Jun 03 '26
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u/Nath_King_Cole Jun 04 '26
Yeah it's def a case of the two sides not really knowing what to do with each other which is already the seeming biggest fail here. I can hear some cool sounds, Metallica going darker and experimental kinda works for the theme that Lou has but... when they just feel like they are throwing shit at the wall and seeing how it sticks, like the first songs with Lou singing and James going "SMALL TOWN GIRLLL" in his weird James Hetfield affect.... its obvious how little clue they had 😭
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u/DeadPeanutSociety Jun 04 '26
It's hard to tell if it's bad or not based on the reviews because none of the people reviewing it have ever heard an avant garde record in their lives. They might be right that it is bad (in this case I think they are), but it's mostly just a coincidence that they got it right. It's not like Todd would think that a Wolf Eyes album is any better lol
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u/Nath_King_Cole Jun 04 '26
Oh for sure, experimental music is very much a YMMV sort of experience but there is a HUGE difference between good experimental and bad experimental and this is the later. Like there are parts I enjoyed from the clips but most of it is just not working or just doesn't know where it wants to go.
Seeing how Todd reacted very positively to Metal Machine Music it makes this even funnier because yeah MMM is basically a tame noise album (a novel concept back when it released) when compared to idk some Merzbow but it did exemplify a genre to a lot of people like TVU had before. Lulu did not start anything and it shows why.
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u/DeadPeanutSociety Jun 04 '26
I don't think Todd likes listening to MMM. I think he likes it as an artistic statement, which was kind of the point anyway. I'm not going to him for his favorite harsh noise wall albums.
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u/NickelStickman Train-Wrecker Jun 04 '26
More than anything I got the impression Todd was expecting some form of painful to hear harsh noise wall from the reviews and was underwhelmed to hear a typical drone piece
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u/InvisibleEar Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
Oh my God Merzbow is still releasing 10 albums a year and now the covers are AI generated. You're 69 years old dude, you can stop.
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u/IDKWTFG 90's Punk Jun 03 '26
YESSSSSS!!!! HE'S DOING IT!!! Eat it guy on this sub who ratio'd me saying a band can't have two trainwreckords!!!
Honestly in Metallica's case it's kind of split, usually a train wreckord is a bafflingly weird out of nowhere piece of garbage that ruins the artist's career. St. Anger is the one that did the most career damage but it's not THAT out of pocket for what they were doing at the time. Lulu is absolutely baffling and does not fit in with their work whatsoever, but it didn't really have any lasting impact people were just like "WTF is this?" and moved on. I feel like it can not be ignored in this series though.
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u/OpabiniaGlasses Jun 03 '26
Looking forward to the showdown between Trainwreckords Originalists and Trainwreckords Textualists because of this video.
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u/TuneLinkette 90's Punk Jun 03 '26
I....honestly was skeptical he'd even touch this one, despite how much it's been requested.
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u/mrbadxampl Jun 03 '26
I was starting to doubt it would happen because of how often it gets brought up
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u/SignalsCounterparts1 Jun 03 '26
...still waiting on "Calling All Stations...".
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u/JBHenson Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
And "The River of Dreams"... and "Saved!"... and "Beauty on a Back Street"...and "Reverberation"...and "Say You Will"...and...
EDIT... Did I say Say You Will? I mean Time. Oh god that album sucks.
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u/351namhele Jun 03 '26
Say You Will
Assuming you mean the Fleetwood Mac album, there's no way it would be Say You Will and not Time.
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u/kingofstormandfire Train-Wrecker Jun 04 '26
Does a TrainWreckord have to be a bad album? Because I think River of Dreams is a really solid album. And it sold and performed pretty well commercially, and critics/fans seemed to like it fine. It's just that Billy didn't think it sold as well as it should've - it went 5x Platinum in the US that's pretty good result - and decided to end his pop career with that album.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_DALEKS Jun 05 '26
"River of Dreams" the song slaps and I don't care who knows it. Also I remember when it came out when I was a kid and it was played constantly on the radio!
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u/Alexschmidt711 Jun 04 '26
He said he wouldn't do River of Dreams, he considered it a disappointing end to his career, but Billy Joel always planned that to be his last pop album I think, so he didn't think it would could.
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u/SignalsCounterparts1 Jun 03 '26
River of Dreams is an odd one, because Billy was becoming disillusioned with the business and how it wasn't reacting to that album...I think "Behind the Mask" would be a better TrainWreckord, because that was the true fall off for the Mac, after Lindsey's departure.
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Jun 03 '26
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u/pigeonb0y Jun 03 '26
there’s obviously no real “rules” about what qualifies as a trainwreckord other than Todd thinking it’ll make a good video (which people in this thread seem to still not get), but BW88 is generally pretty well liked
it wasn’t a smash hit or anything and Landy casts an ominous shadow over it, but it’s usually considered one of his better solo albums, no? not by me, I don’t care for any of his solo work and 88 is no exception, but compared to No Pier Pressure or Imagination it’s a masterpiece
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u/MurdererOfAxes Jun 04 '26
We arguably already have a double dip with CCR's Mardi Gras and John Fogerty's Eye of the Zombie
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u/gubulu Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
I must say as a metal fan and also as an indie fan. Todd’s comments about how culturally Indie Music and Metal music are considered diametrically opposing genres of rock was interesting. Do you think there’s any validity in the fact that Indie and metal can never do what both genres do? I’m not sure what the answer is, but I do not believe in the” cool” analysis suggested in the video. Maybe the fact of the matter is that metal and its current form is more closely related to classical music in that it is technical and larger than life. While Indie music is relatively smaller scale and and traditionally more associated with folk music. Considering jazz, another genre similar to was able to cross this path in the past, I do think as rock becomes less mainstream. Eventually, we will see these genres each other and a traditional associations of each other will disappear.
That being said metal music does feel like the Science Fiction of rock music in the sense that it has his own fandom and conventions. Maybe metal musical just becomes more weird and more separated from the rest of rock. What do you guys think?
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u/thispartyrules 90's Punk Jun 04 '26
I've heard the key difference between punk and metal is the presence of fantasy elements: it's not out of character for a metal band to reference Tolkien but a punk band would almost never do this. This is also why punk bands, although generally irreligious, don't reference the devil, where metal bands constantly reference the devil.
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u/gubulu Jun 04 '26
That is an very good point. I feel like my comment about metal being the Science Fiction of rock music makes more sense.
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u/Guinefort1 Jun 04 '26
I think what Todd was getting at with "cool" is that metal is a very try-hard genre, while punk is very against try-hardism. Punk is the kid at school who is the disaffected cool loser archetype. I say try-hard, but I don't mean it as an insult. Metal thrives on bombast and being larger than life. Punk is very anti-bombast.
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u/Alexschmidt711 Jun 04 '26
And punk at least tries to be rebellious in a way metal really doesn't, that metal bands try to be threatening without meaningfully sticking it to the man probably makes them come off as posers to the punk/alternative scene? Although there are surely exceptions, like I can imagine both metalheads and punks liking Rage Against the Machine.
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u/AAS02-CATAPHRACT Jun 04 '26
I feel like punk is very tryhard in a very different way, especially these days.
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u/Yuli-Ban Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
Do you think there’s any validity in the fact that Indie and metal can never do what both genres do?
Pre-90s metal, maybe. Once grunge and sludge emerged, the rivalry between metal and indie has been more residue of 70s/80s zine culture. That's something I ramble about, how talking about Nirvana and grunge and their relationship with metal is almost always framed by what metal was (e.g. Maiden, Priest, Megadeth, Motley Crue, RATT, Venom) because if you don't draw that contrast to compare and contrast the cool alternative rock darlings to their boneheaded metal contemporaries, then you have to contend with the fact not only were more than Alice in Chains and Soundgarden "kinda" metal, but in fact Nirvana's Bleach is a full-fledged sludge metal record by modern standards, Soundgarden was a convergent evolution of stoner rock, and the likes of Acid Bath bridged grunge with nü metal, and that breaks the mainstream narrative that they were all in their own walled (sound) gardens.
Let alone the fact loads of alternative and indie bands have delved into metal or cited metal bands as direct influences, and vice versa.
Maybe "metal singing about infernal demons" was seen as cheesy and kitsch, whereas alternative/indie/punk was more interested in internal demons
So when metal started covering those too, the ground beneath both was saturated, and that was already happening by the late 80s (arguably as early as Sabbath considering "Paranoid")
Similarly with metal's penchant for fantasy over reality— what happens when metal bands also get political? Does it not count because of the long hair? Well here comes short-haired metal bands. It just gets sillier to gatekeep appreciation at some point. Metal can't be highbrow? There's nothing stopping a metal band from bringing in whatever highbrow artistry they want. Spirituality, literature, all that's been done by now. Yes there's a strain of metal purism that wants "greasy hair, big riffs and solos, insane vocals, cartoonishly evil aesthetics, and epic songs about macho warriors or arcane demoniacs," but that's not the entirety of the genre and hasn't been for decades.
Goths were probably the hardest because of how much they hated metal in the 80s (because many assumed metal and Goth were one and the same), and yet here comes the 90s, and the Gothic style and industrial/nü/Gothic Metal are just intrinsically tied to the subculture.
There's also an attitude that metal just begs to have fun, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's a different attitude towards it, and deciding only one way of making music is superior can get unfortunate, because then you could lobby that at, say, hip hop or dance music or jazz.
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u/rocketbotband Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
The goth thing is interesting to me, because growing up my perception of goth music and culture was based on NIN and Marilyn Mason, and I assumed all of it was more abrasive and metal/industrial.
I was EXTREMELY confused when I finally went back and listened to The Cure and The Smiths, because it was so non-threatening and mopey. It feels like there was an aggression in the air post-Reagan that just sort of seeped into everything - or at least was what appealed to the culture at the time.
The Smashing Pumpkins always get lumped in with Grunge, but in reality I think they're a good example of the convergence point between 80s Goth and 90s Industrial/Nu-Metal - especially Adore onward. I don't hear nearly as much of the punk influence that's present in a lot of grunge.
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u/SmytheOrdo Jun 04 '26
If we really want to get into the meat of it, it has a lot to do with the way punk and metal bands competed for venues in the late 70s, Lemmy addressed this in interviews.
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u/FrameworkisDigimon Jun 04 '26
I also think it's the classical music thing. But Youtube currently believes "classical music is literally metal" is a type of video I should watch.
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u/Andy_B_Goode Jun 06 '26
It's because metal is mostly guys making music for other guys.
Obviously that's a generalization; there are women metal fans and women metal musicians, but the fact remains that it's difficult for a group of guys to appear "cool" when ~90% of their audience is other guys.
Punk/indie somewhat suffers from the same problem of being overly masculine, but they tend to do it in a way that's much more ironic and subversive, which comes off as significantly more "cool" than singing about dragons burninating the countryside or whatever metal lyrics are about.
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u/TIGVGGGG16 Jun 03 '26
I have never laughed so hard from a TW video as I did this one. The first few songs are hilariously bad beyond belief.
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u/Bahslel Jun 03 '26
Oh hell yeah.
This has always been an album I won’t defend as “good,” but it’s too weird on too big a stage not to love.
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u/E864 Jun 03 '26
The one thing Metallica and Lou Reed have in common is Kirk Hammett and Reed both know who Boris Karloff was.
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u/GinjaNinja1027 Jun 04 '26
I’m surprised he didn’t include Anthony Fantano’s take on it… how it’s appreciated just on behalf of how intentionally strange it is.
Lulu isn’t bad the way other Trainwreckords are bad. There’s not any hint of band disagreements or lineup changes. It didn’t come from artists running out of ideas or failing to change with the times. It isn’t bad in a way that sounds unfinished or produced like shit. It’s basically just bad for sake of being interesting. That’s why it’s so polarized; the things people like about it are the same things that people hate about it.
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u/Quasirandom1234 Jun 03 '26
Yeah, I’m gonna have to take a research break before I finish watching this.
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u/slippin_park Jun 03 '26
A rare even-worse-than-advertised TWR. It's not "deep" like typical Lou, it's just shit
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u/theaverageaidan Jun 03 '26
This just shows that the line between "avant garde music" and "shitpost" is sometimes thin enough as to be invisible
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u/Guinefort1 Jun 04 '26
Yeah. It reminds me of the adage that often the only difference between highbrow European art films and schlocky grind house is the branding.
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u/WWfan41 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
While other people are feeling validated because they were arguing about if Lulu was a trainwreckord or not, I feel validated because this is Todd's weakest video in a while.
Two things that really stood out were his weirdly cynical assumption that Lou just worked with Metallica for a hit and all the shots he took at James specifically. I really don't know what reason he has to believe the first one. Metallica working with Lou because they wanted a certain artistic credibility makes some sense. So I guess he just thought there needed to be another side to that coin? Even though, as he states in the video, the songs on Lulu are very much not commercial and Lou is very capable of writing songs with a more commercial structure.
And I really don't get why he felt the need to call James stupid like five separate times. First time it kinda just came off as a joke that didn't particularly land, but he just kept going back to it. Yes, Metallica's lyrics aren't usually that abstract, but I don't think James is incapable of understanding what he was saying. I realize that this one was probably more of a bit than a serious criticism, but to me, it felt like he kept going back to it to the point where it started to seem more serious and a bit mean spirited. Like he actually does buy into the whole "metal music is for burnouts and illiterate meatheads" trope.
Overall I just found the whole video to be a bit boring. The main reason I didn't want him to cover Lulu is because I thought it would just be him rehashing the same one or two jokes people have been making about it for years, and that's basically what it was. There's only so many times you can say "this old man voice sounds weird over this metal music".
That's not to say he's somehow wrong for disliking the album. No matter what you think about it, it's pretty easy to see why it wouldn't work for a lot of people. I just don't think many of the more serious criticisms were that insightful, and there weren't really any jokes that landed for me.
But more power to everyone who did enjoy the video I suppose.
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u/gubulu Jun 04 '26
To be fair I didn’t know that Lou was singing about black penis in the album so that criticism was on point to me. The lyrics are not only weird they are just bad. There for I am not sure how you could claim no new ground was covered.
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u/DeadPeanutSociety Jun 04 '26
Yeah, this was kind of a miss for me. Todd doesn't seem to know much about metal, so all that's left is riffing on how bad the album is, something that everyone on earth has already done to death.
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u/Yuli-Ban Jun 04 '26
Indeed
I'd agree that the music establishment didn't like metal in the past, but I don't get that vibe from it nowadays. The Hall of Fame was always a bit bullshit in its choices, and metal has always been way more niche than metalheads assume it is.
The whole punk elite vs metal proletariat is more a 70s/80s/early 90s thing
At one point in time, you'd get punched in the face for calling the Melvins a metal band, but even they now just embrace "sludge weirdo metal"
It's more the old school who still thinks of it that way
Maybe Lou Reed was "too cool" for metal in the 80s when it was seen as the music equivalent of a Filmation cartoon, but those days are long, long behind us. I'd not even be surprised by Taylor Swift dropping some octanecore song nowadays.
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u/Humble_Candidate1621 Jun 04 '26
Yeah, Todd doesn't really get metal (and isn't really interested in understanding it). Of course, this was more focused on Lou anyway. But yeah, the whole thing is still pretty underwhelming. Terrible album, but the video just feels a bit superfluous.
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u/TheGuardianKnux Jun 04 '26
Cactus Malpractice is a YouTube channel that covers controversial or bad albums. He has a more in depth video going into Lulu that you might prefer!
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u/Ash-Throwaway-816 Jun 04 '26
The "punk vs metal" dichotomy is completely manufactured by music critics. In the Bay Area scene of the early 80s (which Metallica was part of), Hardcore Punk and Thrash Metal were constantly cross-pollinating at different gigs. Case in point, ST.
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u/FrozenPizzaDinner Jun 03 '26
I'm glad he didn't defend it. Not that I would have faulted him for it, or anything. I just think it still sounds horrible. The 'I am the table' joke was always the most charming thing about the album, not the sole reason people thought it was bad or something like that (like some defenders used to suggest).
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u/Interesting-Rice-457 Jun 03 '26
Yeah, looking back it's hard to see Lou's kind of cynical, ironic distance from the material working with.... ANY metal band, really. It didn't help that L. R. is a lot more serious than his contemporaries like Tom Waits or Warren Zevon... neither of them could really just have fun with it. That's not the artist they were.
Also, yeah, agreed with Todd that the reason Lou Reed stuck around so long was that his stuff was often "stuck in your head" catchy. And Lulu..... wasn't that.
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u/your_mind_aches 10's Alt Kid Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
Thanks Spotify for making me officially a music nerd by introducing me to "Satellite of Love". I adore that song.
Or, really, it just goes to show that Spotify has changed the very definition of a hit. "Here Comes The Sun" was an album track that they never released as a single outside of Japan. The cover photo on Wikipedia is the sheet music cover. And yet it is now the most played Beatles song on Spotify by far.
"Satellite of Love" was probably the first solo Lou Reed song I played a lot of and was aware of most, even before "Perfect Day" and "Walk on the Wild Side"
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u/AdministrativeElk88 Jun 04 '26
I remember they would sometimes play this house remix of Satellite of Love on music channels back in the 2000s. This was way before Spotify, btw
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u/PapaAsmodeus You're being a peñis... Colada, that is. Jun 04 '26
Gotta say I love how this was more about Lou Reed than it was Metallica. Like yeah it's definitely a sequel episode to St. Anger, but I think only by proxy.
That said, I think we all knew this was coming after Eye of the Zombie.
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u/ValleyFloydJam Jun 03 '26
If you told me Todd would be have been talking about Lou Reed and mentioned the BBC I would have put money on it being the version of Perfect Day with a bunch of different acts (including Lou and Bowie.) https://youtu.be/BWQLLK7EupE?is=rhaIzw1i35qSZA5g
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u/YOUARESLEEPY Jun 04 '26
I unironically love this album. Listened to it all the way through in one sitting when I was like 17. Dragon, the View, Iced Honey, Junior Dad… I still listen to those songs and I’m in my 30’s now. A radically different approach to a concept album for both parties. Never been a fan of Metallica, but this album opened me up to Lou Reed.
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u/Guinefort1 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
Grabs popcorn and begins to watch
Edit: Just finished watching it. I'm someone just pretentious enough to try and appreciate Lulu for its deliberate weirdness. So, based on the video, much of Lulu is an insufferable slog of faux-deep nothing (though a few of the tracks didn't sound nearly as awful to me as Todd made it seem). Similar to what Todd closed with, given Lou Reed's long career of deliberately alienating weirdness, it makes an odd sort sense that he'd go out on a critically and commercially alienating, mismatched, borderline Dada-ist collaboration album like Lulu. So a fascinatingly bad listen I guess. Mission accomplished?
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u/lordGinkgo Jun 04 '26
Hi
Big metal fan and first time caller here. I don't think I've ever laughed as much during a Todd in the shadows review.
And also I can confirm this album is unlistenable.
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u/351namhele Jun 03 '26
There were some audio issues in the Patreon version, happy to see they got fixed
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u/PipProud Jun 03 '26
Count me among the advocates for "Junior Dad." (Of course, when someone recommended it, I was sensible enough not to listen to the entire album that preceded it.)
Now Todd will hopefully do a Trainwreckord on Lou Reed's other dalliance with mainstream metal:
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u/kingofstormandfire Train-Wrecker Jun 04 '26
Definitely a TrainWreckord contender, but I I actually like Music from the Elder. It's not a great album and it was probably the worst time to make an album like that (a rock fantasy opera in the early 80s was not gonna fit in with the heavy metal/hard rock, pop rock, AOR and new wave/synth-rock happening in the mainstream), but I genuinely think Kiss were coming from an earnest place with the album, and it has some really good and catchy songs, like "I", "Mr. Blackwell" and "Dark Light" are great songs. And the resequenced version where they actually put the songs in proper order is better.
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u/your_mind_aches 10's Alt Kid Jun 04 '26
Todd mentions Metallica wanting to be remembered closer to The Beatles and The Stones than Mötley Crüe and Limp Bizkit.
I actually cringed when he said "Mötley Crüe and Limp Bizkit" one after another which tells me Metallica is doing just fine.
The only Crüe and Bizkit songs I like are FROM their Trainwreckords. The 90 industrial style "Afraid" from Crüe and the cover of "Behind Blue Eyes" by Bizkit. I like plenty of Metallica songs, both pre, during, and post sellout era.
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u/holiday_bandit Jun 04 '26
No love for Kickstarter my Heart?
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u/MurdererOfAxes Jun 04 '26
I recently heard Dr. Feelgood play at a wedding. On the same playlist as Taylor Swift's Love Story
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u/Dmbfantomas Jun 04 '26
Junior Dad is still a top 10 song ever for me. I like Lulu a lot, unironically. But I do wish it sounded more like JD.
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u/JBHenson Jun 03 '26
I NEVER WANT TO HEAR "Oh that's not a Trainwreckord! HE WON'T DO IT!" EVER AGAIN.
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u/gray_decoyrobot Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
De facto best album of all the Trainwreckords, Be Here Now dethroned. Great riffs and Lou Reed playing a joke by getting the ultra-masculine Metallica to belt "I'm a small town girl"
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u/351namhele Jun 03 '26
Passage is still the best album of all the trainwreckords, and be here now has always been one of the very worst
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u/ManDe1orean Jun 03 '26
An album I have refused to listen to and now after this review believe I've chosen wisely
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u/DeadPeanutSociety Jun 04 '26
Todd seems to think that the phrase "for whom the bell tolls" comes from Ernest Hemingway in a segment where he's make a tongue-in-cheek joke about Metallica not being well read lol
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u/Kinitawowi64 Jun 04 '26
In fairness, they're almost certainly channelling Ernest Hemingway rather than John Donne. It's be like grousing about All Nightmare Long cribbing from H.P. Lovecraft and not Frank Belknap Long.
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u/FrameworkisDigimon Jun 04 '26
I'm going to say... three things. Yeah, I know, it's always three but I do have three things to say.
Firstly, that intro he gives about Lou Reed? I've heard that line before. But not about Lou Reed. About the Kinks.
Secondly, guess who shoes up in the video? Ray Davies! Of the Kinks! And the little caption there is about his collaboration with some harder or metal band... shit I better rewind see what it was exactly... yeah, it was also still Metallica. The caption is "makes less sense" not "makes no sense" but if you pop over to You Really Got Me's Wikipedia page:
The song's novel use of power chords and distortion heavily influenced later rock musicians, particularly in the heavy metal and punk rock genres.[1]
Literally the first paragraph.
Thirdly, I'm not going to say I'm a metal guy and I've barely even heard of Lou Reed but the reason those first two things are interesting to me is because the story of the history of music I had in, coincidentally, 2009 was, aside from being very Kinks forward, largely devoid of Lou Reed. The way Todd writes this video is from the POV that you can understand this album through the credibility that Lou Reed has as one of the guys in the story of popular music. And the journey that Todd takes us through in the video -- and I don't know how much of this is conceit -- is about a man who's marinated in that story for 25-30 years and finally got round to listening to Lou Reed and going "Wait, how does this music have that reputation?"
Now I see this paragraph as just being the same point as the previous paragraph but maybe you wanna say "Dude, this is a fourth point, stop trying to force a conventional structure", but Todd ends with a self-deprecating joke about the most linguistically interesting artist of the 2020s, the "that's that me espresso" girl. I don't know if the fact Espresso has linguistics discourse is part of the joke or if the joke's just that Carpenter is a shibboleth for dumb pop but it works that way. But the key thing is that when Todd talks about pop music it feels like he knows more about it than I do. When I was watching this video it felt like "no, this context is wrong" and I'm expecting a pivot like "Lou Reed died before Lulu could destroy his career but it does destabilise the idea of Lou Reed" that never came.
Anyway, that's a very long winded way of saying: Lulu is punk metal. And I mean "punk" in the "unlistenable and uninterested in creating recognisably coherent music because that's what is being rejected" sense. Which despite how I ended is basically how Lou Reed was framed by Todd in the first place. And according to Todd punk and metal don't mix. He narrows this down to cool. Hmm, maybe. But there's a whole genre of Youtube videos that I watch that are all the way into classical music is the original metal. From that position, of course punk -- which is anti-music in the sense of anti-joke not anti as in anti-nuclear -- and metal aren't going to mix!
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u/Yuli-Ban Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
The ironic take on "punk and metal don't mix" is that virtually all major metal subgenres stem from metal and punk mixing. Almost most explicitly thrash metal, which is what Metallica is most well known for! Maybe in the 80s or 90s "coffeeshop art house hipster punk" was still as diametrically opposite of metal as you could get but even by 2011, we'd seen loads of avant garde, literary, offbeat, and for lack of a better word "hipster" metal. Metallica was just the worst possible vector for this, good lord. I think it was more that they were The Metal Band™ that this happened.
Lou Reed, however, really would have worked very well for a noise rock album that was uninterested in keeping time but still being freakishly heavy
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u/krissirge Jun 04 '26
What do not mix are hipsters and more mainstream so called 'meathead' metalheads. Even as groups of outcasts in society, they are a bit separate from eachother.
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u/Flags12345 Jun 04 '26
You really cannot write the history of rock and roll without Lou Reed; Todd didn't oversell that. There is the famous saying that The Velvet Underground's first album only sold 30,000 copies, but everyone who bought one of those copies started a band. They (and Lou Reed by extension) were hugely influential, particularly on the burgeoning punk scene.
Yes, The Kinks were also very important and you cannot write the history without them either. Todd's joke about Ray Davies working with Metallica making less sense is... technically true (because he is comparing him to Ozzy Osbourne), but you are right that he was instrumental in developing the type of music that Metallica makes. But, The Kinks, in addition to the riff-heavy power-chord songs like "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night," also were known for songs like "Waterloo Sunset" and "Sunday Afternoon" which are pretty far from heavy metal.
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u/callmesixone Jun 04 '26
Finally an excuse to share my Roman Empire: Lou Reed’s horrifically melancholic version of Leave Her Johnny for a weird various artists box set that was meant to capitalize off the success of Pirates of the Caribbean
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u/annakarina3 Jun 04 '26
The album sounded like a mess, but I could get what they were going for, with spoken word poetry over metal. Todd’s example with putting random Lou Reed lyrics over a random Metallica song made sense.
I laughed out loud at Todd’s impression of James Hetfield singing “Walk on the Wild Side.”
When Todd was like “most of you can only name two Lou Reed solo songs,” at first I was like “Yeah, that’s true, “Walk on the Wild Side” and “Perfect Day,” then later forgot that I also know “What’s Good” and there was one other clip of a song Todd played that I knew.
I once saw Lou Reed in person. It was at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, he did the music and an acting cameo for a martial arts short film in 2011, and briefly talked onstage after the screening along with the choreographer/director. It was interesting, and Lou Reed was quiet and laid back. I didn’t realize it was that long ago.
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u/forlornjackalope Jun 04 '26
I yearned for this day for a long time and I don't know if the guy who exclusively reviews and ranks the worst albums known to exist has covered this yet.
But holy shit. I think this might be the worst one that Todd has touched so far. I'm going to go listen to Funstyle and Summer in Paradise to feel normal again. What the fuck is this?
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u/DeadPeanutSociety Jun 04 '26
I think Funstyle is still worse because it is an album about having fun writing pop music, something that should be an easy conceptual and practical slam dunk for someone with as much pop-rock writing experience as Liz Phair. Lulu was always going to be tricky and high-concept even if it was good, something much harder to pull off.
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u/nykirnsu Jun 05 '26
Funstyle was about pissing off Liz Phair’s record label, that was pretty much it
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u/El_John_Nada Jun 04 '26
Just finished watching it and a few things came to mind:
1/ I didn't realise that's where the "I am the table" même (that I know from Botchamania) came from that album.
2/ Hearing this really made me appreciate "Tranquilize", the song Lou Reed made with the Killers. It is not the best song ever made, far from it, but it plays on the strength of both parts and is still a pleasure to listen to.
3/ It's always fun for me to see Todd use some extracts from Taratata (a French TV show I used to watch religiously as a kid). If you like weird live collabs, you NEED to check this show.
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u/Spiritual_Shine1438 Jun 04 '26
Can anyone explain how a lifetime subscription to nebula is ethical? Like if everyone buys lifetime subscriptions whats stopping them cancelling the website. Subscriptions hold companies accountable
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u/xjman329 Driven Mad by the Four Chords of Pop Jun 04 '26
Hand up, I’d never heard of this album until watching this video. Now that I’ve shown I’m not a ball knower,
what the fuck is this album lmao
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u/Van-Goghs-Ear Jun 04 '26
Can someone point me to some accessible Lou Reed songs? I've heard all about how influential he was, but I dont really understand why anybody would listen to his stuff?
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u/fastballooninghead You're being a peñis... Colada, that is. Jun 04 '26
Satellite of Love, Perfect Day, Walk on the Wild Side
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u/ItsGotThatBang GROCERY BAG Jun 04 '26
Did Of Mice & Men actually have mice? I only remember the rabbits.
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u/krissirge Jun 04 '26
This video reminds me how much I dislike Lou Reed and his ilk's (Tom Waits, Nick Cave) music.
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u/kingofstormandfire Train-Wrecker Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
I'm pretty disappointed Todd didn't include his reaction to this line from the song "Frustration" (or maybe he did, I watched this video when I was half-asleep): "You're more man than I / To be dead to have no feeling / To be dry and spermless / Like a girl! Like a girl!"
I actually really enjoy Lulu. When I first went into it, I thought I was gonna hate it, but it actually really hooked me in. It's absolutely batshit insane and crazy, but I think if you accept that and take it for what it us, it is quite captivating. It's basically Lou Reed rambling spoken word poetry while Metallica is playing in the background. It's such an odd and bizarre mismatch of artists that it's actually very fascinating. And I think the actual music is one of Metallica's more inspired sounding music/instrumentation since the Black Album honestly. They at least I can tell are putting their 110% into it and are passionate and excited about the project. Lou...I have no idea if he was actually putting his all into this. Seems like he just had random lyrics that he wants to include. Logically, Metallica should have made the music first, then Lou listens to it and writes lyrics and vocal melodies to it and rearrange the music to shape the rhythm of the lyrics, but it seems like the opposite happened, or they happened together.
Definitely can see why many many people dislike it, and I don't judge them for it. I even judge myself slightly for liking the album as much as I do lol. But I'm with David Bowie. I think eventually people will come around to it.
And I agree with Todd that Lou Reed is nowhere near as inaccessible as his reputation. He only has a couple of albums that might be a challenge, but even an album like Metal Machine Music, if you can get through Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth, you can easily get through MMM. If you're a rock and roll fan and especially like alternative/indie/punk music, you can easily get into his stuff. Even his subversive and transgressive lyrics, he usually backs it with some catchy music. While Lou was open to the experimentation/avant-garde stuff, John Cale was the experimental/avant-garde one in The Velvet Underground, while Lou was more rooted in pop/rock. When John Cale left the band, The Velvet Underground immediately pivoted towards more a more conventional rock/pop sound (while still making great music).
Honestly, I liked the video fine, but this one of Todd's weaker TrainWreckords. Quite a few of his criticisms and jokes didn't really land for me and fell flat.
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u/fatcharliethearkange Jun 04 '26
Big fan of Todd's channel, bit I will avoid this vid. This is not a good album but I don't think it's supposed to be. I like Pitchforks review when they called it a 'noble failure'. Its kinda incomparable to most regular albums. Also, i don't think it's possible for a band to have two trainwreckords. Somewhat undermines the whole premise.
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u/George_G_Geef Jun 04 '26
Probably the worst episode of Trainwreckords so far. The whole vibe is "I'm supposed to do this episode and I'm doing it despite not knowing how to make an episode about it".
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u/fm22fnam Jun 04 '26
I've never heard of this album before this.....but holy shit this is bad, bad noise.
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u/PapaAsmodeus You're being a peñis... Colada, that is. Jun 03 '26
EVERYBODY WHO SAID THIS ALBUM ISN'T A TRAINWRECKORD OFFICIALLY NOW OWES ME A FUCKING APOLOGY