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Song Stories

“Rock & Roll”

The Velvet Underground | 1970

Lou Reed celebrates the power of "Rock & Roll" with savage glee in the Velvet Underground song of that title, seeing it as the salvation of a young girl when it blasts out of the radio. First issued on the band's 1970 album, Loaded, it gained a new audience when a ten-minute version was featured on Reed's 1974 live album Rock'n'Roll Animal. "'Rock & Roll,'" he admitted in the liner notes to the VU box set Peel Slowly and See, "is about me. If I hadn't heard rock & roll on the radio, I would have had no idea there was life on this planet."

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“Hands”
The Ting Tings | 2010
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“Sister Ray”
The Velvet Underground | 1968

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Song Stories

“Everyday People”

Sly and the Family Stone | 1968

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.

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