If you thought he was bad in 08, he’s not getting any better now.
Yeah, but the backup choir is awesome.
I agree totally with the OP. And yet, the news keeps claiming how he influenced so many classic rock musicians? Oh, plah-eeeeeeze! I think it was the other way around! A fly’s buzz has more chromatic scale than Lou Reed! 
Lou Reed’s voice is perfect for Lou Reed’s music, however, I challenge any of his fans to listen to this for more than 5 minutes!
I wouldn’t say classic rockers as much as the alternative scene. He was a huge influence. There is no denying that.
Lou Reed an awful singer? No he isn’t.
You know they’ve got a hell of a band.
Slight tangent: I just finished reading Howard Kaylan’s “Shell Shocked: My life with The Turtles, Flo and Eddie, Frank Zappa, etc”. In one passage he talks about a “chance encounter with the hilarious Lou Reed.” I don’t think I’ve seen that word use to describe Lou anywhere else. 
If you can call it singing at all. I think he just croaked.
Well, now, yeah.
**Good God - Lou Reed is a really awful singer!
**
And you are just now finding this out?
In a write up I read in Rolling Stone, I think, Bono says something like “Lou had a songwriter’s voice.” Indeed.
Lou Reed’s voice was perfect for the style of raw, unpolished proto-alternative that he played.
Yup.If this version of Sweet Jane doesn’t make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, report to the coroner - you are officially dead.
He can’t hold a note in a bucket in that version, his note accuracy is worse than US forces in Iraq (they duck, we duck, everybody ducks) he can’t sustain a note, but worst of all, that dreadful headless 6 string looks like it came out of a lucky bag
Yeah, I saw that for the first time a few weeks ago. It really is a great version of that song. It really wouldn’t sound “right” with any other singer. That sort of monotone New York detached-cool sound to his voice is perfect for his music (although he gets a bit more emotionally involved in this version of the song.)
That is a great version by him. He’s playing one of those guitars like Johnny Winters plays (when Winter isn’t playing his Firebird). Headless guitar - I think it is a Lazer or something like that - a kind of anti-guitar-hero guitar; makes sense for Lou
Hmm, that’s not it: Erlewine Guitars | The Lazer
As for “it wouldn’t really sound right with another singer” - you don’t like the Cowboy Junkies’ cover? God I love that version - languid and sparse.
I didn’t say I didn’t like any other versions of it. 
I put “right” in quotes to give me a little weasel room here. Lou Reed’s take on it is just so emblazoned in my mind that only his version sounds just right to me. The Cowboy Junkies it turned it into a beautifully haunting song. But for me the original is definitive.
Is singing ability the major point of consideration of an artists work? To a performer, yes, to an artist, not so much.
Huge difference between the two.