Alexander Stuart

For anyone who has any doubts about Lana Del Rey's hauntingly broad range of talents, here are two songs and videos that capture the beauty of her voice and presence at its most vulnerable and simply moving. Chelsea Hotel #2 is a Leonard Cohen song that Lana Del Rey sings even more beautifully than Cohen (and I love Cohen), bringing to it the strange kind of frailty that Lou Reed brought to songs like Perfect Day (both Cohen and Reed videos are below.) The second Del Rey song is Black Beauty, from her album Ultraviolence , made all the more beautiful here by the "fanmade" music video by Peter Tatsis, which features vintage footage of female dancers (along with footage of Del Rey herself, from other videos) which in its own way is as haunting as Lana Del Rey's tender song and voice. Lana Del Rey's music now strikes me as comparable in a sense to early Bowie: enormously varied, hugely accomplished and at the same time the beginning of a long wonderful

Very sad to learn from the New York Times that music LEGEND Lou Reed has died at 71, survived by his wife, the equally extraordinary Laurie Anderson. He was so fabulous in concert. Just astonishing music: Sweet Jane , I'm Waiting For The Man , Heroin , Walk On The Wild Side ...and the whole Bowie -produced Transformer album ( Perfect Day is sublime, too)...he is and was a genius. I remember his double album (in the days of double albums) Metal Machine Music - four sides of guitar feedback/white noise, reputedly released to fulfill his contract with RCA Records (they had Bowie and Lou, how I loved them even if he didn't). The New York Times article about his death is here: Courtesy New York Times October 27 2013.