![\"Lou](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Lou-Reed-Musician-1997-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Thu 5 February 2026 20:00, UK <\/p>\n
As time has gone on, technology<\/a> has obviously improved. <\/p>\n In some ways, artists curse that, with the rise of AI risking true artistry or even just the hyper-clean recording tool sucking some of the life out of music, but on the other hand, it\u2019s a blessing protecting pieces of art and allowing them to flourish in their most sparkling form. For Lou Reed, on a project where he rediscovered his own music, he was thankful.<\/p>\n Overwhelmingly, Reed didn\u2019t look back, unwilling to dwell on the last project and didn\u2019t care to reflect too much on his old music, as, instead, he liked to keep things moving forward and evolving. On occasion, he\u2019d talk about his favourite of his own songs, or a lyric he wrote way back when that still moved him<\/a> in his older age, but mostly, even in his final years, he wasn\u2019t one for nostalgia. <\/p>\n However, when an invite landed in 2003 to take charge of a compilation album of his work, Reed, on a rare occasion, said yes and got fully involved. NYC Man wasn\u2019t just another greatest hits record, but was fully curated, sequenced and remastered by the musician himself. <\/p>\n It was a mammoth 31-track career retrospective that included both Velvet Underground and solo hits, alongside previously unreleased tracks he loved and some deep cuts he\u2019d always liked most. The ordering is interesting too, as it doesn\u2019t move chronologically. Instead, it is in some unknown order that clearly made sense to the artist, playing a song like \u2018Walk on the Wild Side\u2019 in the middle between \u2018The Kids\u2019 from Berlin, and a random live performance of \u2018Kill Your Sons\u2019 from Sally Can\u2019t Dance. Across both discs, he jumps around like that from album to album, era to era<\/p>\n Doing the record became a passion project for Reed, mostly for the technology more than anything. In his mind, the purpose of it was to take the songs he loved and fix them, cleaning them up after the quality had been mangled by earlier iterations. \u201cThe first generation of CDs sounded terrible<\/a>. Any chance to remaster would make the music sound better than what was already out there,\u201d he said as his reasoning behind it, adding, \u201cSound quality was the reason I listened to those songs. That\u2019s it. They sound better now.\u201d<\/p>\n However, saying yes to that project led him to say yes to another, leading to the album he believes sounds best out of all his releases. Decades after it came out, Reed was approached to do a live performance of his divisive record Berlin and record it for a live album. The result was something Reed wasn\u2019t just happy with, but that he saw as a gold standard, telling Spin, \u201cThe Berlin DVD, I\u2019ll match that up against anything. The sound is murderous. Murderous\u201d.<\/p>\n