1989: Welcome to New York

"New York" (1989), by Lou Reed

Welcome to the 1989 project, where each month we’ll start with a Taylor Swift song from her 2014 album 1989 and leap from that to music that was released or charted in the year 1989.

The opening track from 1989 is “Welcome to New York” - a triumphant anthem about dancing in the lights of this famous city. Here’s the meat of the song - and its darkest lyric (emphasis mine):

It's a new soundtrack, I could dance to this beat, beat forevermore
The lights are so bright, but they never blind me, me
Welcome to New York, it's been waitin' for you
Welcome to New York, welcome to New York

When we first dropped our bags on apartment floors
Took our broken hearts, put them in a drawer
Everybody here was someone else before
And you can want who you want
Boys and boys and girls and girls

“Welcome to New York” (T.S.)

Aside from alluding to broken hearts, that’s not very dark at all. For the narrator in Swift’s song, New York represents a place where you can easily leave your past behind and dance in the bright lights. She celebrates the freedom and acceptance of everybody with a clear recognition of queer culture, and defies criticism by insisting these bright lights “will never blind me.”

But Lou Reed would like a word.

For those who don’t know, Lou Reed was part of the Velvet Underground - and the art scene of New York in the 1970s. He was a famously bisexual heroin addict who was also famously cruel and unlikeable. You could describe him as the polar opposite of Taylor Swift, though there are a few rhymes in their respective stories. Like Swift, Reed was unhappy with his record company. After being pressured to produce more radio-friendly hits, he famously produced a double album in 1975 with no vocals and no lyrics called Metal Machine Music, which many believed to be his version of malicious compliance with his contract.¹

By 1989, Reed’s career had brought him to a place where he felt like he could do and say what he wanted, and he put all of that into New York. When you turn off the bright lights and wake up next to that drawer full of broken hearts the morning after the party, his New York looks very different from Swift’s. A lot has changed in 35 years, but Lou - an icon of the underground queer community of New York - paints a picture of the city that shows how the bright lights are a distraction and the dancing is not meant for everybody:

I'll take Manhattan in a garbage bag
With Latin written on it that says
"It's hard to give a shit these days"

“Romeo Had Juliette” (L.R.)

Or, from the other hit single from this album:

Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor - I'll piss on 'em
That's what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses, let's club 'em to death
And get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard

“Dirty Blvd.” (L.R.)

You read that right - that bitter three-chord rock song about abuse and growing up poor in New York City sat at number one on the then-new Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart for four weeks in early 1989.

But listening to the album now doesn’t feel like I’m listening to a distant history. There are polemic parables about environmentalism and Native American rights (“Last Great American Whale”) and about the desire to retreat from the Culture Wars (“Beginning of a Great Adventure”) that could refer to modern events—not to mention screeds that name-check villains from 1989 who are with us still today.

They ordained the Trumps
and then he got the mumps
and died being treated at Mt. Sinai
…
My arms and legs are shrunk
the food all has lumps
They discovered some animal no one's ever seen
It was an inside trader eating a rubber tire
after running over Rudy Giuliani

“Sick of You” (L.R.)

The songs on the first half of New York alternate between straightforward rockers and slower, more thoughtful tracks. “Halloween Parade (AIDS)” is a deceptively upbeat eulogy for a cast of colorful characters lost due to the Reagan Administration’s refusal to address the AIDS epidemic. “Endless Cycle” confronts the generational violence and abuse that poverty and ignorance impose on people - managing to empathize with their suffering without exonerating them for their choices.

As we sit here in January of 2025, looking at our near future, the New York of 1989 is still there, hiding under the bright lights. And Lou Reed’s New York is still here to tell us what we need if we’re going to get through the darkness.

You can't depend on your family
you can't depend on your friends
You can't depend on a beginning
you can't depend on an end

You can't depend on intelligence
ooohhh, you can't depend on God
You can only depend on one thing
you need a busload of faith to get by, watch, baby

“Busload of Faith” (L.R.)

All of the ugliness, all of the bitterness, the fear, hate, and the anger - it’s terrifying. There is a strong temptation to put our broken hearts in a drawer and try to party until it’s over. For the privileged and protected few, that may work. But for the rest of us, this time is a call to action.

That’s where I’ll leave you, for now. Because “There Is No Time” is that call to action:

1. Burke, Kevin, The Big Takeover Show, “Ambient Punk - Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music Explained”, 1 July 2020.