10 Creepy Myths Surrounding Popular Songs

Lou Reed’s 1973 concept album Berlin is all about a broken relationship, specifically that of Jim and Caroline, who crop up regularly throughout the record. It’s hardly the most cheery of albums, but track 8, ‘The Kids’, takes things to new levels of melancholia.

The song describes Caroline’s children being taken away by the authorities, because “she’s a bad mother.” To hammer home the sense of despair that accompanies the loss or removal of a child, Reed and producer Bob Ezrin added the sounds of real children crying and screaming into the mix.

This lead to the circulation of several rumours pertaining to the origin of the cries. Some claimed that Ezrin told his own kids their mother was dead, in order to provoke such an intense response, while others proposed he locked them in a cupboard.

It’s all fabrication, mind. Ezrin recorded his kids, but while they were throwing a tantrum at bed time. It’s normal kids’ stuff, but the recording is so affecting it had people speculating otherwise.