Edited by JOHN DALY
Iggy Pop, St. Vincent and Kurt Vile are the featured artists on I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground and Nico, which will be released by Verve Records this September. Vile releases a cover track, “Run Run Run” out today.
The album, produced by the original label home of The Velvet Underground, also features Thomas Bartlett, Sharon Van Etten (with additional vocals by Angel Olsen) and more; pre-order HERE
The record’s debut track, “Run Run Run” by Vile and The Violators gets an accompanying video.
Limited autographed items including vinyl and vinyl test pressings signed by Kurt Vile and other featured artists will be available HERE.
I’ll Be Your Mirror was overseen and executive produced by Hal Willner, Lou Reed’s dear friend and producer who passed away last year. Willner was a master of the tribute album, with each project he worked on extending the magnitude of the artist or work under consideration. In particular, he very much viewed himself as a primary curator of Reed’s legacy, and the care and love he felt for his friend’s work is evident in every note on I’ll Be Your Mirror. Fittingly – and sadly – it is the last album he worked on.
The release of I’ll Be Your Mirror kicks off a 2021 that celebrates the Velvet Underground, including a movie project by Todd Haynes.
The 1967 release of The Velvet Underground & Nico, the Velvet Underground’s debut album with its iconic Andy Warhol-designed peel-off banana cover, was a seminal event, kicking off a process of aesthetic infiltration that continues to this day. The record single-handedly redefined the boundaries of what Rock N Roll could achieve and express, inventing the very notion of alternative rock and laying the blueprint for punk, grunge and every rebellious underground gesture to follow.
Check out ‘Run Run Run’ here: