Songfacts®:

• Though this song first saw the light of day on Transformer, it dates back to Reed's band The Velvet Underground, and a version of the song recorded by The Velvet Underground surfaced on the Peel Slowly And See box set. That version is a much harder rocker than the version on Transformer, with a faster tempo, and without the piano line that dominates the later version.
  
  The lyrics are also different; "I've been told that you've been bold with Harry, Mark and John," Reed sings in the bridge. In the Velvets' take, the three cads came from a 19th century children's poem: Wynken, Blynken and Nod.
  
  "Best left forgotten," Reed explained of the original lyric in 1994. "I probably wanted to make sure I wasn't using a name that really meant something to me. I mean the song is about the worst kind of jealousy." >>

  Suggestion credit:
  James - Lexington, KY
• David Bowie, who used lots of space imagery in his own work, produced this track and sang backup vocals.
• Regular Bowie sideman Mick Ronson played both piano and recorder on this track.
• In the 1987 Def Leppard hit "Rocket," the line in the chorus, "Satellite of love," is a reference to this song.
• An updated version titled "Satellite of Love '04" was released in the United Kingdom in 2004, making it to #10 on the singles Chart.
• Morrissey released a cover of the song following Lou Reed's death on October 27, 2013. The former Smiths frontman's version was recorded at the Chelsea Ballroom at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas in 2011. "He has been there all of my life," wrote Morrissey of the late Velvet Underground vocalist. "He will always be pressed to my heart. Thank God for those, like Lou, who move within their own laws, otherwise imagine how dull the world would be."
• Beck performed this song at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony when Lou Reed was inducted in 2015.