Sweet Jane

Lou Reed wrote the song for the Velvet Underground's Loaded (1970). Cowboy Junkies based their arrangement on the slower version released on 1969: The Velvet Underground Live (1974) rather than the Loaded studio recording. The band had tried it before: a version was recorded at the sessions for their debut album in June 1986 but left off the record. The Trinity Session take runs 3:41 and was issued as a single in 1989.

Reed was often quoted as saying that the Cowboy Junkies version was his favorite. Pitchfork, reviewing a later remake, described the slowed-down original as endorsed by Lou Reed himself and one of the best Velvet Underground covers put to tape. In 1994 the recording was on the soundtrack of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, which put it back on the radio, and it was heard again in the final episode of the series Stranger Things. The band's 2007 remake, with Natalie Merchant and Ryan Adams among the guests, drew a different verdict from Pitchfork's Stephen M. Deusner, who called its reading of the song overly dramatic.