A song on the Velvet Underground album of the same name, which involves injecting certain proscribed substances. (No, not heroin this time around.)

The song, and the album, are much noisier than their previous effort, The Velvet Underground and Nico, or either of the following albums, on which Lou Reed refined his lyrical sensibilities.

The track listing for the album is as follows:

  1. White Light/White Heat
  2. The Gift
  3. Lady Godiva's Operation
  4. Here She Comes Now
  5. I Heard Her Call My Name
  6. Sister Ray
Many hard-core Velvets fans, especially those who prefer John Cale to Lou Reed, find this album to be the apex of the band, especially the barely controlled chaos of Sister Ray, which takes up nearly an entire side of the album, sharing it with only I Heard Her Call My Name.

The Velvet Undgerground's best record and therefore one of the best records ever. Very aggressive, intoxicating, energetic, brilliant, and poorly produced. I hypothesize that the reason this was the best Velvets record is that it was more of a collaboration between all the members (Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker) than the other records in which Lou Reed is the dominant figure. In other words, the Velvet Underground had synergy which is most evident in this album. BTW I use the term collaboration interchangably with noise war.

Electricsound's writeup is not entirely right about the line-up: it's the same line-up as on the first album; the first album just had Nico on a few tracks. And jonlasser's writeup is not entirely right about the absence of heroin references (see Sister Ray).

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