#99, "Caroline Says II," Lou Reed (1973)

150 Favorite Songs: #99, "Caroline Says II," Lou Reed (1973)

Lou Reed was probably the first songwriter-as-storyteller whose work I really loved. I discovered him in high school—solo Lou, not the Velvet Underground—and during the height of 90's alternarock, all of the storytelling songwriters I knew sang about themselves, or at least stand-ins for themselves. Even great ones like Nick Cave and Greg Dulli and Tori Amos usually kept things first-person, and sang about people who resembled themselves. 

But I discovered Lou Reed through, I don't know—probably someone I loved listed him as an influence in an interview without mentioning the Velvet Underground, or maybe somebody who got played on the radio covered one of his songs and later that week I saw a used CD at Music Express. At any rate, I found Lou Reed pretty young, probably when I was 14 or 15, which I was proud of at the time, like I was investing in an older sort of coolness. 

He's written better songs than "Caroline Says II," which is a fairly shallow depiction of a woman in an abusive relationship ("why is it that you beat me / it isn't any fun" is not exactly insightful), but when I found this song, I don't think I'd really ever heard anything like it before. Lou's delivery is characteristically laconic here, of course—even when the song climaxes and he sings, "she put her fist / through the window pane / it was such a funny feeling," he does it in a tone that reminds you of how mundane such an action really is. Which I found really captivating at the time, because all of those singers up there in the first paragraph are not exactly known for being understated, especially not in their incarnations circa 1994 (Let Love In, Gentlemen, and Under The Pink are many great things, but subtle is not among them). 

I guess, basically, when I heard "Caroline Says II," I hadn't heard anything that used empathy the way that Lou Reed does here, telling a simple story about a horrible situation in a way that feels so resigned that it breaks your heart. I wrote short stories for years afterward that tried to find room for a female character named "Alaska." I wanted to learn how to do that, how to take yourself out of the story you told. There's something about music, and pop songs, that made that much easier for me to map out—especially when I was a teenager—than literature. It seemed so singular to me, so important, that it didn’t even occur to me for years to see if there was a “Caroline Says I.” (There is—it’s from the perspective of the man in their relationship, makes Caroline out to be the villain; as a standalone track, it’s self-pitying and tacky, a “baby you did me wrong” song of the sort that usually made me roll my eyes even when I was a teenager. In the context of “Caroline Says II,” though, it’s a powerhouse of perspective—though it’s notable that part two doesn’t require part one to be effective.)

Listening to “Caroline Says II” now, it's still meaningful to me in those same ways. There's something about listening to a song that opened up your world as a teenager half a lifetime later and finding that you were right about it that's reassuring. It's always been lovely—that melody and the way it rises are some of Lou's best instincts at work—and it's always meant something to me, too. It's a reminder, at the very least, that there are always things outside of yourself that are worth paying attention to and writing down.