The album received universal critical acclaim upon release, and is widely considered to be among Reed's strongest solo efforts. It is highly regarded for the strength and force of its lyrical content; Reed stated that he required simple music so that it would not distract from his frank lyrics. The single "Dirty Blvd." was a number-one hit on the newly created BillboardModern Rock Tracks chart for four weeks.
Reed's former band, the Velvet Underground, were at the peak of their cult popularity in the late 1980s, but his solo career had hit several lows during the 1980s. The widespread popularity of New York reignited his career to the extent the Velvet Underground were revived for a world tour.
Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker played percussion on two tracks.
Reed also drew inspiration from some of his friends and fellow artists. For instance, in the song "Last Great American Whale", Reed quotes John Mellencamp, referring to him as "my painter friend Donald."[3] Upon hearing the album, Mellencamp himself said, "Yeah, it sounds like it was produced by an eighth-grader, but I like it."[4]
Artwork
The cover art is a photograph with five different shots of Reed superimposed on the same street scene. The rear photo is the same street scene without Reed. The street is lit from the right hand side, while the photos of Reed are all lit from the left. Photography is credited to Waring Abbott. The album design was done by Spencer Drate, Judith Salavetz, and Sylvia Reed.[5]
Reviewing New York for Rolling Stone, Anthony DeCurtis described the album's songs as "fierce, poetic journalism" and found that Reed shows a newfound "political outlook that grounds his work and lessens his characteristic detachment", concluding that "whenever anyone wants to hear the sound of the Eighties collapsing into the Nineties in the city of dreams, New York is where they'll have to go."[12]NME critic Gavin Martin said that the album's simple rock and roll sound complements Reed's "often condemnatory" lyrics, which Martin felt displayed "personal insight, invective and, most telling, a profound compassion for his characters and their place in the scheme of things."[9]New York was voted the third best album of the year in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll for 1989.[16] "Whether or not you buy Reed's line about New York being a single integrated experience 'like a book or a movie'," remarked Q in its end-of-year round-up, "this is indisputably one of the landmark albums of an inconsistently brilliant career."[17]
In a 1995 reappraisal, Q's Bill Prince noted that New York "signalled the beginning of the defrosting of Reed's Velvet Underground past that has so far marked out his '90s."[18] Mark Deming wrote in his review for AllMusic that "New York is a masterpiece of literate, adult rock & roll, and the finest album of Reed's solo career."[6] In a retrospective overview of Reed's discography for Spin, David Marchese stated that the album had a "mix of sharp detail, righteous anger, and razor-wire rock" and "was Reed's best of the decade."[13] Writing in 2020 for Pitchfork, Daniel Felsenthal called New York "a record of unmistakable conviction, one so direct and literary, erudite and rageful that it resembles no protest music written before or since." Felsenthal stated, "The city of his birth becomes his Yoknapatawpha County, a location for synecdoches that encompass large swatches of experience. Like much great fiction, Reed's handling of his themes—a depleted environment, indigenous persecution, pro-lifers, police killings, racial violence—has aged into greater relevance today."[10]
In 1989, Rolling Stone ranked New York the 19th best album of the 1980s.[19] In 2006, Q listed it as the decade's 26th best album.[20] In 2012, Slant Magazine placed the record at No. 70 on its list of the 100 best albums of the 1980s.[21]
Other releases
Reed performed all the tracks on New York in order on August 13, 1989, at Théâtre Saint-Denis in Montreal, Canada, and this performance was recorded and released as a DVD entitled The New York Album.[22] The DVD also contains an audio-only interview with Lou Reed ("A Conversation with Lou Reed").
In September 2020, a deluxe box set version of New York was released, containing the remastered album on both CD and a two-record set, plus a second CD of previously unreleased live versions from Reed's 1989 tour, a third CD of song demos, alternate mixes, one unreleased song from the album sessions, and two live encore recordings, and a DVD of the Montreal performance.[23]
Track listing
All tracks are written by Lou Reed, except as indicated
Fred Maher – drums on all songs except "Last Great American Whale" and "Dime Store Mystery", bass guitar on "Romeo Had Juliette" and "Busload of Faith"
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