There's a wonderfully sour sense of humour running through Chris Connelly's "Nothin' But A Rock Song." The guitars press forward with a blunt, stubborn rhythm, leaving plenty of room for Connelly's weathered voice to dictate the mood. He delivers each phrase with a mixture of theatrical contempt and weary amusement, sounding like someone who has been awake too long and still has a few unpleasant things to say. There's an undeniable pleasure in the performance, particularly in how completely he inhabits its exaggerated rock persona.
Taken from Doo Wop In The Dark: A Portrait of Lou Reed, the track draws on the attitude and cultural atmosphere surrounding Reed's mid-1970s work. Connelly approaches that world with an appreciation for its contradictions, where glamour could look deliberately ugly, arrogance became entertainment, and a leather jacket could carry almost as much significance as a guitar. The instrumentation remains relatively uncomplicated, its insistent rhythm allowing Connelly's phrasing, timing and dramatic delivery to command attention. His performance captures something fascinating about Reed's legacy: the ability to make a cultivated image feel dangerous, even when its theatricality is plainly visible.
The accompanying video, created by Iain Mutch, brings another dimension to the portrait. Faces, cigarettes, lipstick, guitars, film imagery and fragments of pop culture flash across the screen in an almost compulsive procession. The editing captures the peculiar power of rock mythology, where a photograph or a fleeting expression can become part of someone's entire understanding of music, beauty and rebellion. There's plenty of glamour here, although the occasional ugliness makes it considerably more interesting.
What makes Connelly's interpretation so engaging is his willingness to embrace the absurdity of that mythology without diminishing its appeal. The sneer, the exhausted charisma and the carefully arranged ugliness all belong to a culture that understood how much could be communicated through a single gesture. Connelly gives those gestures their full dramatic weight, allowing the guitar's persistent grind and his own expressive delivery to make them convincing. His affection for Reed's world extends to its most ridiculous excesses, and there's something rather wonderful about hearing an artist celebrate that spectacle with such complete conviction.
