The Velvet Underground & Nico | |||||
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Studio album by The Velvet Underground and Nico | |||||
Released | March 12, 1967 | ||||
Recorded | April–May and November 1966 | ||||
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Length | 48:51 | ||||
Label | Verve | ||||
Producer | Andy Warhol | ||||
The Velvet Underground chronology | |||||
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Nico chronology | |||||
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Singles from The Velvet Underground & Nico | |||||
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Alternative cover | |||||
The early LP edition with the banana-skin sticker peeled off.
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Professional ratings | |
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Retrospective reviews | |
Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | |
Chicago Tribune | |
Encyclopedia of Popular Music | |
Pitchfork | 10/10 |
The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
Sputnikmusic | 4.5/5 |
The Village Voice | A |
The Velvet Underground & Nico is the debut album by American rock band the Velvet Underground, released in March 1967 by Verve Records. Accompanied by vocalist Nico, the album was recorded in 1966 while the group were featured on Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia event tour, which gained attention for its experimental performance sensibilities and controversial lyrical topics, including drug abuse, prostitution, sadism and masochism and sexual deviancy.
Though the record was a commercial failure upon release and was almost entirely ignored by contemporary critics, The Velvet Underground & Nico is now widely recognized as one of the greatest and most influential albums in the history of popular music. It ranked 13th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and was added to the 2006 National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress. In 1982, musician Brian Eno famously stated that while the album initially only sold 30,000 copies, "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band." Genres that were significantly informed by the album include art rock, punk, garage, grunge, shoegaze, gothic, indie, and most other forms of alternative music.