The article offers a »thick description« of the song Heroin, which appeared
on the first album of The Velvet Underground in 1967. My thesis is that
Heroin – against the backdrop of pop-historical upheavals of the second half of
the 1960s, which may be considered a ›saddle period‹ (›Sattelzeit‹) of pop music –
results from a triple process of ›artification‹ (›Verkunstung‹), committing different
types of convention violation. These concern the conventional rules of packaging
(Andy Warhol’s banana cover), as well as textual (neutral as well as pointedly literary
portrayal of drug use) and musical ones (J. Cale’s discordant viola performance
and M. Tucker’s amateurish as ingenious drums), combining to yield one of those
provocative transgressions that sustainably altered the grammar and semantics of
popular music. In addition, the end of the piece features one of those rare moments,
which, by reference to Roland Barthes’ work and to pop theorist Diedrich
Diederichsen, can be called »punctum«

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• »Make them vomit« Heroin von The Velvet Underground