Can an album so endlessly fascinating, unique, and perplexing like Lou Reed and Metallica's Lulu truly be one of the worst albums ever made? Derek McArthur argues for the album's merits.

In the history of music, not much of it is actually any good.

So the question of what’s among the worst can truly feel like a needle-in-a-haystack task. Moreover, what’s the worst album, the worst collection of songs that has ever been compiled into one?

Recently, the album that seems furthest ahead in winning the unwanted worst title is Lou Reed and Metallica’s bewildering 2011 collaborative effort Lulu.

It’s an easy target. Reed, a groundbreaking songwriter and experimentalist reaching the end of life, collaborating with a legendary heavy metal band long past their relevance. It’s not something anyone asked for, expected, or wanted.

But something is fascinating and difficult to explain about such a random pairing of artistic voices. Reed’s lyrics, delivered in a brittle and frail spoken word voice, had not been as potently imaginative and alive since his 1970s heyday, and the distorted power chords of Metallica work their way into becoming the perfect accompaniment to the substantive lyrical themes of compassionless love and self-destruction.

The sound of the record hardly resembles a Reed album or a Metallica album, so it was never going to appeal to either respective fanbase. The artsy contingent interested........

© Herald Scotland