On Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013, I awoke at 1:15 in the afternoon after an excellent night out seeing The Chariot’s last performance in Chicago. I popped open my laptop, hopped on Facebook, and saw my friend post an article from Rolling Stone on his profile. It was Lou Reed’s obituary.

Since 1964, Lou Reed has been one of the most important and unique figures in rock music. He spent the first part of his career as a member of The Velvet Underground, a New York art rock group who released four albums before Reed transitioned to solo work. These four albums — 1967’s The Velvet Underground & Nico, 1968’s White Light / White Heat, 1969’s The Velvet Underground, and 1970’s Loaded — are all considered rock n’ roll classics. During his time as a solo artist, Reed also released many seminal albums that would achieve the same highly praised status, including 1972’s Transformer, 1973’s Berlin, and 1975’s Coney Island Baby.

The thing that made Lou Reed’s work so iconic was his vocal style and captivating lyrics. Reed was never praised as one of the greatest singers of our time, but his voice was undeniable. When you heard a Lou Reed song, you knew it was a Lou Reed song, and they will always and forever be unmistakably Lou Reed songs.

He wasn’t just a singer or a songwriter either. He was truly a poet in every sense of the word. One of the prime examples of Reed’s extravagant lyricism is on a track called ‘The Gift,’ the second song on The Velvet Underground’s sophomore album, White Light / White Heat, and my favorite album Reed has ever lent his words and music to. The song is roughly eight minutes long, and its lyrics are a short story written by Reed and spoken by co-Velvet John Cale. The band swirls along in the background as Cale dictates Reed’s depiction of character Waldo Jeffers and his societal interactions.

One of the best things about Lou Reed was his absolute fearlessness. He never backed away from something that he thought might not go over well with an audience. He’d try anything. The two most infamous projects to come out of his unabashed creative mind were 1975’s Metal Machine Music and 2011’s Metallica collaboration, Lulu. The prior is a double album of simply noise and nothing more. No songs, just guitar feedback and industrial sonic drones. However, this album paved the way for many experimental and avant-garde noise rock artists that would show up in the 1980s and beyond. Lulu was a musical affair that, to many, was utter trash. While I can’t say I disagree completely, Reed’s brash personality on the double concept album is incredibly intriguing. Though, to be fair, Lou Reed’s vocals over Metallica’s music is something that even the most hardcore fans of both artists questioned upon the project’s initial announcement.

I group Lou Reed in the same category I’d group someone like Leonard Cohen or Nick Cave: someone who composes beautiful music under often dark or troubled lyrics and stories, who ceases to hold anything back. With that being said, I also group Lou Reed in the same category that I’d group Lemmy Kilmister, for the sole reasoning of being an absolute, indisputable, rock n’ roll badass. We almost lost Lemmy earlier this year from heart failure, but he bounced back and Motörhead released their 21st studio album Aftershock on October 21. Sadly, we lost Lou to complications from the liver transplant he underwent in May, and another album from the rock n’ roll animal will never land in our hands. Maybe a collection of unreleased material is out there, and maybe we might hear the last things recorded by Reed before he passed. For now, we have four Velvet Underground albums, twenty solo albums, and a myriad of live albums, bootlegs, and compilations from both sides of Reed’s prolific career.

Lewis Allan Reed died on the morning of October 27, 2013, a Sunday. It’s a bit eerie to think about that when you read the lyrics he wrote for the classic Velvet Underground tune entitled ‘Sunday Morning.’ Reed writes, “Sunday morning / praise the dawning / it’s just a restless feeling by my side / Early dawning / Sunday morning / It’s just the wasted years so close behind / There’s always someone around you who will call / It’s nothing at all.”

Reed wasted none of his years, and music fans around the world will continue calling for him. The dawning will be praised, and the feelings will rest as Reed will from now on: peacefully.