Hear Me Out: Lou Reed’s ‘Tell It to Your Heart’ is truly the song that captures New York
“I think of New York as being something almost like my DNA,” Lou Reed once said, quoted in the documentary Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart. “You know, I have my parents, and then there’s New York.”
The songs written in tribute to New York are truly endless, its illustrious streets posing as wells of inspiration for artists of all kinds to extract from – plenty of musicians have become synonymous with New York, but considering those whose legacy is inextricably tied to the city, Lou Reed prevails as one of its greatest champions.
Born in Brooklyn, raised on Long Island, and initially making a name for himself on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Reed was astute when sharing a belief that New York is woven into his DNA – the city was his muse, consciously or unconsciously, and even as he spent periods abroad, finding his identity as a musician, New York always lingered in the back of his mind, drawing him back no matter what.
Speaking on the BBC’s The Late Show programme in 1989, Reed described the occasional romantic notion in his songs as “New York romance”, naming his song ‘Tell It To Your Heart’, from 1986’s Mistrial, as “one of the prettiest songs I ever wrote about the city”. Reed’s ballad is an ode to romance told through a distinct New York lens, gleaning beauty from the city’s iconography.
Reed sings of peering into a telescope, watching a spinning light in the night sky – is it a star or something else? – indebted to them as reminders of his lover. On The Late Show, he quotes a particular verse that is his presumed favourite. “I was standing by the Hudson River’s edge at night,” he croons, “Looking out across the Jersey shore / At a neon light spelling out some cola’s name.”
Imagining Reed staring out into the city, confronted with the red neon light and only being able to think of his lover, is a remarkable image. “And I thought your name should be dancing,” he concludes, “Beamed from satellites / Larger than any billboard in Times Square.” Such an admission is a romantic cliché in the best way: how can he profess his love as greatly as possible? How can such love be observed by as many people as possible? Equating his love to an unmistakable beam of light is surely a possibility.
“New York City lovers, tell it to your heart… please don’t be afraid,” Reed pleads, as he finds himself sitting on his rooftop at 5:00am, unable to sleep as he stares at the same spinning light as before.
“Maybe I should wake you up,” he considers, “But by then it might be gone / You never know what you see when you look up in the sky.” He invokes the symbols of classic New York punk as he leaves his home, journeying to nowhere in particular: “Listening to my boot heels clock / My leather jacket squeaked / I needed a cigarette.”
As he turns the corner, he realises that the spinning light was coming from the street, a television crew filming a commercial. A classic case of New York amusement, the belief of a profound symbol of love, countered by a moment of simple passerby, being at the right moment, at the right time.
‘Tell It To Your Heart’ grows from a call to a lover to an ode to New York, specifically the city’s ability to romanticise the slightest of occurrences. Romance – however strange, however fleeting – is seeped into the streets of New York for anyone to see, and the unpredictable nature of the city only fuels such wishful thinking. Whether you are from the city or just passing through, chances are you fall in love with the very spirit that it possesses; for Reed, that love was born with him in Brooklyn, followed him to Long Island and remained with him permanently.
