Every Song I Love: "Cool It Down" by the Velvet Underground

WORDS BY LIZ/FOREHEAD ART BY JEN

I heard "Cool It Down" by the Velvet Underground for the first time on a Friday afternoon in the spring, standing at a sink in a bathroom in a restaurant, wearing blue eyeshadow, excited about a guy. The restaurant has marble tables and sells artisanal marshmallows and elaborately frosted moon pies, the eyeshadow's called Painkiller and sparkles in the sun. I took some pictures of my eyelids and listened to the song, which felt perfectly matched to my makeup and my mood: it was jubilant, which is a weird word and slightly embarrassing to type or say out loud. But I can't stop myself from thinking that word when I think of "Cool It Down" - it's just very much jubilant song, at least in the context of the Velvet Underground:



Now it's a few months later and I've listened to "Cool It Down" at least a few hundred times, but it still sounds so new to me. Here are some of the things I love most about it:

-how the vocals kick in right in the first second: no time to waste for old Lou! And I love how the vocals are layered or "overdubbed," or whatever the hell that's called. It's like Lou's singing with himself, which I think is sort of sweet of him. This is the first time it's ever occurred to me that Lou Reed might be described as "sweet."

-the line about Lou looking for Miss Linda Lee. "Miss Linda Lee" is a cool rock name; I picture her in hot white boots and wild eyes and a beautiful bouffant. I have no idea what Miss Linda Lee looks like to Lou, and I really don't care. "What Lou Reed looks for in a woman" is of little to no interest to me.

-the part when Lou spells the word love. He sings it like love is spelled "W-L-O-V-E," which is confusing and fun and kind of fucks with the whole Sesame Street vibe of using song lyrics for spelling practice. (Not that I'm not 110 percent into that whole Sesame Street vibe - I  wish more songs reminded me of Sesame Street. Songs with counting are so killer, too; I'd be very into more songs with a "Ladybugs' Picnic" kind of feel.)

-the part when Lou sings "Somebody's got the time-time," at the start of the second verse. Lou loves saying "time-time": he says it in "Sister Ray" too, and it's somehow both tough and whimsical. The complete lyrics to that part go:

Somebody's got the time-time
Somebody's got the right
All of the other people
Trying to use up the night

- and right now those are my favorite lyrics in the whole song/world. They make me think of this great point that Molly Lambert made about the Mad Men episode where Sally visits boarding school and that awful Rolo tries to put the moves on her. Molly wrote:

Sally should trust her own feelings, even if it means not fitting in with the teens all around her, who are so eager to have tried everything. She doesn't want new experiences just to have had them. She wants them to mean something too.

I felt really understood, reading those sentences, and I feel really understood when Lou Reed is judgy about the night-user-uppers. Being careless and thoughtless about what you do with your nights probably just kills your soul. I want romance and adventure for Sally Draper, and everyone else who's cool and into shit being meaningful, and I guess that includes Lou Reed.

I mean, say what you will about Lou Reed, but the dude's definitely way into "meaning."