Tune in on Tuesday for five overlooked and underappreciated Reed songs: Here's a selection of 10 songs that highlight in part Reed's achievements and the extent of his influence. Like his former patron, Andy Warhol, Reed saw things everywhere that were worth of reflecting upon and never let boundaries - musical, social, whatever - hem him in. Now, many try to imitate him or seek to replicate his methods. His desire to meld his tunesmith's instincts with avant-garde sonics as well as his literary and poetic ambitions pushed his work to heights precious few could conceive of. Instead, Reed should be recognized and praised for his fierce artistry. Echoing a common theme, a writer on NPR.org crassly praised him for "his songs about hookers and junkies," but Reed's songs were more than just a kind of song-based pulp fiction. His willingness to depict subjects ranging from drug abuse, moral ambiguity and the sexually taboo and deliver it with lyrical frankness and a deadpan singing style might have positioned him as being exploitative. He was frequently hailed as the bard of the New York's underbelly. Reed's interest in the dark side is easy to caricature and left him and his work open to salaciousness and distortion. In the process, Reed's discography served as a powerful beacon to generations of songwriters and musicians who sought to break new ground, or at least act like they could. While Reed's contemporaries worked in the mainstream and occasionally dabbled in more challenging directions, Reed's work stood on the fringes and only sporadically crossed over to a mass acceptance. If rock's leading lights of the '60s - Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Paul McCartney - could again be compared to the gods of Mount Olympus, Reed was an easy analogy for Hades: A menacing, alienated and undervalued deity but one every bit as powerful as his rivals. No matter how Reed's records sold, however, it was his fierce desire to experiment - pushing boundaries as well as buttons - that made him a towering figure in rock music. Reed's only brush with fame came with his lone hit record, 1972's "Walk on the Wild Side," which is almost a novelty and remains a kind of insurgent ode masquerading as a classic-rock radio staple. To a lesser extent, Reed's string of well-regarded but small-selling solo records - the best of which include "Transformer," "Berlin" and "New York" - continued the frustrating pattern. The Velvet Underground's four landmark albums placed the group as one of the most important acts of rock's most pivotal era even if no one at the time knew it. His influence on rock music remains profound today in spite of the failure of most of his records to ever sell in vast quantities. Wearing his dark, outsider heart on his leather-jacketed sleeve, Reed was a songwriter and performer of singular vision and unbending will. Reed's career is one of the key jumping off points, without which there might not have been punk, glam, underground rock or even electronic music. His life and death marks the final breakage in a branch of rock music, separating the music's roots and early 20th Century influences through to the modern descendants, many of which are now genres of their own. Reed, who earned legend status as a solo artist and leader of the seminal 1960s art-rock band, the Velvet Underground, died on Sunday on his native Long Island after undergoing a liver transplant last spring. In a popular art form that so persistently champions the thoughts and feelings of rebellious outsiders, Reed always stood far out from the pack. As rock gods go, Lou Reed remained an odd fit in rock music's pantheon.
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