Like “Pale Blue Eyes,” the song “I’ll Be Your Mirror” is a short, tender love song. With nothing more than the soft strumming of a guitar and the ringing of a tambourine in the background, Nico’s restrained vocals make the song so much more gentle.
This song was apparently inspired by Nico herself, who once came up to Lou and told him, “Oh, Lou, I’ll be your mirror.”
As ever, Lou could extrapolate from that simple sentence and create a full-fledged character whose thoughts and emotions are expressed in the lyrics. Then he could add some perfectly fitting music to create a beautiful tune.
While “I’ll Be Your Mirror” is clearly a love song, its phrases and expressions are somewhat atypical of any love song. In the standard love songs since the creation of pop music, there are probably very few that come close to saying anything like “I’ll be the wind, the rain, and the sunset.” Many pop songs will refer to sunrise, sunshine, and … well, more sun. Lou chose the opposite.
And there’s definitely never been another song that said anything remotely similar to “I’ll be … the light on your door to show that you’re home.” That’s because there was only one poet who could put those words together so evocatively.
I’ll Be Your Mirror, Velvet Underground …
Lou Reed, Anthology of Memorable Lyrics.
Images sourced from Google Images.