"Walk on the Wild Side" is a song by Lou Reed from his second solo album, Transformer (1972). It was produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson, and released as a double A-side with "Perfect Day". The song received wide radio coverage and became Reed's biggest single, despite its touching on taboo topics such as transgender people, drugs, male prostitution, and oral sex. In the United States, RCA also released a "cleaned up" version of the single without the reference to oral sex or "colored girls", but most radio stations continued to play the unedited version. In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked it at number 223 in its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.