Deride the lightning

Lou Reed is one of the greatest songwriters of all time and once made perhaps the most indulgent album ever in 1975s “Metal Machine Music.”

“No one is supposed to be able to do a thing like that and survive,” he said, years after making it.

If that’s true, we should all say a prayer for Reed. “Lulu,” his new, downright atrocious collaboration with Metallica, is the kind of album that only a 50-year veteran of the music business can make without it being his last.

From its first lyrics, which find Reed sweetly crooning, “I would cut my legs and tits off when I think of Boris Karloff and Kinski,” “Lulu” confirms itself as exactly what everyone desperately hoped that it wouldn’t be: two egomaniacal artists mocking listeners for attention by feigning mutual respect.

But most of all, it fails because there is absolutely no real coexistence here, only two incompatible artists fighting each other for the spotlight for almost 90 minutes (and then telling every music journalist in the world they brought out the best in each other).

It’s no coincidence, then, that “Lulu”’s one redeeming moment, the first 10 minutes of the 19-minute finale, “Junior Dad,” is also the one where Metallica stays completely out of the way. The result is an unobjectionable Lou Reed song.

It’s the other 67 minutes that should have never been recorded.