Sally Can't Dance is the fourth solo studio album by American rock musician Lou Reed, released in September 1974 by RCA Records.[5]Steve Katz and Reed produced the album. It remains Reed's highest-charting album in the United States, having peaked at #10 during a 14-week stay on the Billboard 200 album chart in October 1974.[6] It is also the first solo Lou Reed album not to feature any songs originally recorded by Reed's earlier band, the Velvet Underground, as well as the first of Reed's solo studio albums to be recorded in the United States (Reed's previous three albums were all recorded in the United Kingdom). The album art was designed by noted Fillmore and Broadway poster artist David Edward Byrd and was one of the few album covers he ever designed.
Background
Aside from the title song, Sally Can't Dance includes "N.Y. Stars" (in which Reed pokes fun at "fourth-rate imitators" who tried to impress him by copying his style), "Kill Your Sons" (a reflection of his stay in a psychiatric hospital at his parents' insistence, during his teen years), and "Billy," about the fate of a schoolmate with more "normal" ambitions than he'd had. The latter track reunited Reed with erstwhile Velvet Underground bandmate Doug Yule, playing bass guitar. According to an interview with Yule, the call from Reed was "out of the blue", because Reed thought Yule's bass playing style would work well on the song "Billy", and Yule agreed to play on the song saying he "liked it" and that he had enjoyed the session.[7] More tracks featuring Yule have emerged on a CD re-issue. The title song reached #88 in Canada,
[8] while the album itself was #22 for 3 weeks.[9]
While the record was a hit and elevated Reed's status as a star, he reportedly was disappointed in its production (in which he took a largely passive role) and the treatment of the songs. Reed remarked, "It seems like the less I'm involved with a record, the bigger a hit it becomes. If I weren't on the record at all next time around, it might go to Number One." In a 1976 interview, Reed stated that Sally Can't Dance was "a piece of shit from beginning to end."[11]
Cash Box said of the title song "a bluesy narrative type of vocal singing has made Reed as distinctive a performer as any" that has "the same hit feel" as "Take a Walk on the Wild Side."[13]
In 1974, however, RCA insisted on a rapid follow-up album while Reed's career appeared to be peaking. Tiring of the pressure put on him, and with his contract requiring RCA to release whatever record he gave them, Reed handed over the master tape of Metal Machine Music—an hour of feedback and noise, with no chance of becoming a hit.
