The Velvet Underground & Nico

Not to be confused with The Velvet Underground (album).

The Velvet Underground & Nico
Studio album by
the Velvet Underground and Nico
ReleasedMarch 1967 (1967-03)[a]
RecordedApril, May and November 1966
Studio
  • Scepter and Mayfair, New York City
  • TTG, Hollywood
Genre
Length47:51
LabelVerve
Producer
The Velvet Underground chronology
The Velvet Underground & Nico
(1967) 		White Light/White Heat
(1968)
Nico chronology
The Velvet Underground & Nico
(1967) 		Chelsea Girl
(1967)
Singles from The Velvet Underground & Nico
  1. "All Tomorrow's Parties" / "I'll Be Your Mirror"
    Released: July 1966[8]
  2. "Sunday Morning" / "Femme Fatale"
    Released: December 1966
Alternative cover
The early LP edition with the banana-skin sticker peeled off

The Velvet Underground & Nico is the debut studio album by the American rock band the Velvet Underground and the German singer Nico. Released by Verve Records in March 1967, the album underperformed in sales and polarized critics upon release due to its abrasive, unconventional sound and controversial lyrical content. It later became regarded as one of the most influential albums in rock and pop music and one of the greatest albums of all time.

The Velvet Underground & Nico was recorded in 1966 while the band were featured on Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable tour. Warhol, who designed the album's record sleeve, served as co-producer alongside Tom Wilson. The album features elements of avant-garde music incorporated into brash, minimal and groove-driven rock music. Lead singer and songwriter Lou Reed delivers explicit lyrics spanning themes of drug abuse, prostitution, sadomasochism and urban life. Characterized as "the original art-rock record",[9] it was a major influence on many subgenres of rock and alternative music, including punk, garage rock, krautrock, post-punk, post-rock,[10] noise rock,[11] shoegaze, gothic rock, art punk and indie rock.[12] In 1982, the English musician Brian Eno quipped that while the album only sold approximately 30,000 copies in its first five years, "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band".[13]

The Velvet Underground & Nico has been included on several all-time lists, including that of Apple Music and Rolling Stone.[14][15][16] In 2006, it was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[17]

  1. ^ Strodder 2007, p. 58; Schinder 2007, p. 325; Wall 2013, p. 25; Blush 2016, p. 70.
  2. ^ Hogan 1997, p. 1.
  3. ^ Harvard 2004, p. 138.
  4. ^ Unterberger 2009, p. 135.
  5. ^ George, Bruce (February 24, 1967). "By George". Troy Daily News. p. 11 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ^ Ober, Chick (February 27, 1967). "Record Reviews: New Vaudeville Band at Bayfront Thursday". Tampa Bay Times. p. 7D – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ^ "Off the Records". Tulsa Sunday World. March 5, 1967. p. 7E – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ "Singles&EPs".
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference Clash was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Reynolds, Simon (2007). "Post-rock". In Cox, Christoph and Daniel Warner (ed.). Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. Continuum International. p. 359. ISBN 978-0-8264-1615-5. Post-rock has its own sporadic but extensive history [...] In terms of electric guitar, the key lineage runs from the Velvet Underground [...] The Velvets melded folkadelic songcraft with a wall-of-noise aesthetic that was half Phil Spector, half La Monte Young—and thereby invented dronology, a term that loosely describes 50 per cent of today's post-rock activity.
  11. ^ Media, ACRN (March 2, 2020). "Punk'd: The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground & Nico". ACRN.com. Retrieved December 16, 2023.
  12. ^ Richman, Simmy. "The Velvet Underground: The velvet revolution rocks on". The Independent. Archived from the original on February 13, 2017. Retrieved February 12, 2017. "On that first album alone, the Velvets invented—or at the very least inspired—art rock, punk, garage, grunge, shoegaze, goth, indie and any other alternative music you care to mention."
  13. ^ Sources discussing the quote: The quote referenced:
    • McKenna, Kristine (October 1982). "Eno: Voyages in Time & Perception". Musician. Archived from the original on August 5, 2012. Retrieved November 8, 2012. I was talking to Lou Reed the other day and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold 30,000 copies in the first five years. The sales have picked up in the past few years, but I mean, that record was such an important record for so many people. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!
  14. ^ "Apple Music 100 Best Albums". Apple. Retrieved November 10, 2024.
  15. ^ "Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. No. 937. December 11, 2003. Archived from the original on January 4, 2009. Retrieved July 18, 2006.
  16. ^ "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. December 31, 2023.
  17. ^ March 6, 2007 – Recordings by Historical Figures and Musical Legends Added to the 2006 National Recording Registry Archived October 29, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, News from the Library of Congress, 2006 National Recording Registry – The Library Today (Library of Congress).


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.