1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die - #91. Velvet Underground - Velvet Underground And Nico

Velvet Underground - Velvet Underground And Nico

Label – Verve
Producer – Andy Warhol and Tom Wilson
Art Direction – Andy Warhol
Nationality – USA
Running Time – 48:34

Track Listing (standout tracks listed in bold)

1. Sunday Morning
2. I'm Waiting For The Man
3. Femme Fatale
4. Venus In Furs
5. Run Run Run
6. All Tomorrow's Parties
7. Heroin
8. There She Goes Again
9. I'll Be Your Mirror
10. Black Angel's Death Song
11. European Son

When your are playing a record, and you shout out “for the love of god will this crap ever end?” – your listening to a really bad album. That is exactly what I screamed out around track 9 of this record as it played. The fact that I read where this is considered to be one of the most influential records ever made – makes me question everyone’s sanity. This is just a bad record. Dreadful. Awful.
It reportedly took over a decade for the album's sales to crack six figures. I feel sorry for those record buyers.
Recorded in 1966 during Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia event tour, “The Velvet Underground & Nico” is full of out of tune ramblings, disjointed melodies, bad lyrics and out of tune singing on EVERY single song. The album I reviewed of Nico’s and this record are equally as bad. By the way – this record features Nico as well!! Doing some reading on the record I came across this statement: “While the significance of Nico's contributions have been debated over the years, and if Andy Warhol's presence as ‘producer’ was primarily a matter of signing the checks, his notoriety allowed The Velvet Underground to record their material without compromise, which would have been impossible under most other circumstances.” Interesting – but what a shame it sucks so bad.
Though largely ignored upon release, (it’s chart peak was at #171) for some reason that I will NEVER understand the record has since become one of the most influential and critically acclaimed rock albums in history. It appears at number 13 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time as well as being added to the 2006 National Recording Registry by the Librarian of Congress. In April 2003, Spin put the album at the number one spot of their "Top Fifteen Most Influential Albums of All Time" list (though the list excluded albums by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Elvis and The Rolling Stones). In 1997, Velvet Underground & Nico was named the 22nd greatest album of all time in a Music of the Millennium poll conducted in the United Kingdom by HMV Group, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In his 1995 book, "The Alternative Music Almanac", Alan Cross placed the album in the #1 spot on the list of '10 Classic Alternative Albums'. In 2006, Q magazine readers voted it into 42nd place in the "2006 Q Magazine Readers' 100 Greatest Albums Ever" poll, while The Observer placed it at number 1 in a list of "50 Albums That Changed Music" in the July of that year. Also in 2006, the album was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the 100 best albums of all time. It is, however, not recommended as it is just terrible.

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You can purchse the CD here.