Lou Reed died Sunday, leaving behind 50 years of influential rock ‘n’ roll music.

Reed helped perpetuate the cool, collected attitude of rock music, particularly the avant-garde scene, through The Velvet Underground and years of experimental solo music.

When musicians of his prominence — those who have enjoyed early success and survived the “live fast/die young” years — die, it’s a shocking event. It’s not that we necessarily expect them to live forever. But if their music is exceptionally good, it never ages to appreciative ears, creating the illusion that the artist remains ageless.

I remember hearing The Velvet Underground for the first time in high school. Their debut album, “The Velvet Underground & Nico,” was a signature one for me as I persevered through the teenaged-angst. While many boys my age were attempting to woo girls with Blink-182, I was playing The Velvet Underground for girls in the backseat of my 1994 Lincoln Town Car. The enchanting melodies of “Sunday Morning” and “Femme Fatale” made me feel young love as I tried sharing those feelings with others.

Soon after, I was introduced to “White Light/White Heat” where Reed and the boys flipped the table by creating an experimental album of gritty, feedback-powered rock ‘n’ roll that contradicts most of their first album’s tone. As noisy as it is, I admired it for stepping out of the bounds of rock music, as I understood it at that time. The droning, disorderly wail of “Lady Godiva’s Operation” was a song that I often repeated one to three times before letting Reed’s voice and soft guitar rhythms on “Here She Comes Now” fill my heart with peace and continuing angst.

I thought those two albums were the be-all end-all albums of Reed’s career until a friend introduced me to the album “Loaded”, and especially to the moody, sunshine pop heartbreaker “Who Loves the Sun.” It was then that I discovered the vast collection of Reed’s other brilliant (and sometimes questionable) work as a solo artist.

Reed was known for his effortlessly cool attitude, which was exhibited through him smoking cigarettes on stage, guitar in hand, while wearing a black leather jacket and aviator-sunglasses. It was not only shown in his demeanor, but through the charismatic tone of his songs.

“You’re a slick little girl,” he sung with vigor and charm on the album “Transformer;” an album filled with verbose language and a never-going-to-die spirit.

Although his getup was not always unusual compared to other rock stars, he backed it up by daring to be bold through music experimentation without regards to how it would be perceived to his audience.

His 1975 release of “Metal Machine Music” was a head-scratcher to say the least; A 64-minute album of sheer industrial noise and perpetually bellowing guitar loops of feedback and reverb.

Then there’s “Lulu”, Reed’s collaborative album with Metallica where he does spoken-word poetry over metal riffs while confidently professing, “I am the table,” over and over again. It might be the worst album of all time. (No, seriously, but it at least deserves one listen.)

Although Reed was probably attempting to fulfill a final avant-garde fantasy with “Lulu,” it doesn’t matter that it was his swan song. He left behind a massive collection of brilliant songs and albums that will inevitably inspire generations of musicians.

Reed is also renowned for using “ostrich tuning,” or tuning all the strings to the same key to create a deep drone sound. It’s so magnificently done in “Venus in Furs;” and it seems to be replicated in many contemporary acts today.

His influence has reached numerous musicians and bands spanning many decades and genres of music: David Bowie, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Pearl Jam, U2, the Sex Pistols, Nirvana, Galaxie 500 and more.

Former Smiths front man Morrissey once reflected on his first experience seeing Reed perform.

“To imagine a 12- or 13-year-old going by themselves, to see somebody such as Lou Reed who was at the time singing exclusively about trans-sexuality and heroin and death and the beauty of death and the impossibility of life,” Morrissey said in an interview with Telegraph in 2011.

And after his death, the world has had the opportunity to reflect on a beautiful life and a stellar career.

Goodbye, Lou Reed. Hopefully your music will surge into its own space of timeless rock ‘n’ roll while also helping angst-y teenagers across the world deal with young love and the pains of discovering their identities.