The one hundred fifty-third album: #153 The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground
For me, the first song on this album starts off as strongly as anything. Candy Says is a lovely ballad about Candy Darling, a trans woman, and how she's unhappy with how she was born. It feels touching and effective, immediately reaching me. While not all the subsequent songs make as much of an impact on me emotionally, the other songs remain good pop ballads, with enough rock sounds to qualify as such but not going as experimental or weird. The album clearly sets out to make good songs rather than be experimental. Murder Mystery is the one exception to this, and it stands out for not fitting quite as much into the rest of the album. Even here, though, it mostly comes from the spoken verses interrupting the sweeter chorus, drawing from the contrast of the sounds of this album and these frantic interruptions. It just feels incredibly appropriate for the entire album - some lovely pop songs with that bit of art mixed in.