I’ve heard tons of albums in the time I’ve been on this Earth, and The Velvet Underground & Nico stands out to me among almost all others. There’s a bunch of great debut albums out there, some notable ones being The Ramones, The Clash, uh, something other than 70s punk, Led Zeppelin, My Generation, Talking Heads: 77 so this isn’t all self-titled debuts. There’s definitely some others out there but that’s all I’ll include. All pretty solid albums and definitely worthy of praise, but those albums are all from bands that heavily evolved with later albums, therefore their debut albums aren’t the albums most associated with their sound. Maybe The Ramones, but I have to prove a point. That’s why it’s even more insane how much the Velvet Underground got right with their 1967 debut The Velvet Underground & Nico. Not only is it an incredibly fun and engaging listen, but it defines them to their core. It’s rough, there’s songs about substance abuse, songs where the production was influenced by substance abuse, it’s edgy, dystopian, revolutionary, ***ed up and you can’t stop listening. That’s basically their entire discography. All of their albums are at least one of those things. This album wasn’t a commercial smash when it came out, I think it sold, like, 30,000 copies and critics were indifferent to this album. Barely anyone heard this thing. It seemed to be, again, ahead of its time, because on lists like Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, this thing peaked at the #13 spot in 2003. It deserves the praise, as it’s truly a remarkable listen. It influenced everything, it changed music, everything would’ve been different if this album hadn’t happened. Thank Christ it did, because not only would music be completely different, but I would be completely different. This is one of a few albums that I would say shaped me as a person. And those other albums are some of my all-time favorites, and this album is my favorite debut album of all time. Let’s talk about how awesome The Velvet Underground & Nico is.
As lazy as I am, I have to give this album some backstory. The Velvet Underground formed in 1964, and they consisted of singer-guitarist Lou Reed, guitarist Sterling Morrison, multi-instrumentalist John Cale and drummer Angus MacLise. The drummer would change to Maureen Tucker in 1965. They weren’t called the Velvet Underground right away, though. They performed under several names before settling on being the Velvets, and they got the name from the title of a book about sadomasochism. That’ll be a running theme in this essay, titles for things being taken from titles for books about sadomasochism. In 1966, pop artist Andy Warhol became their manager, and they served as the house artist for his studio, the Factory. They also joined his traveling multi-media show, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable Tour. In July of 1966, we got the Velvets’ first single, All Tomorrow’s Parties, but I’ll talk about that when I get to the place it’s on in the album. It featured German vocalist Nico on lead vocals, but she wasn’t in the band. The band made sure we knew that, as their debut album would be released on March 12, 1967 as The Velvet Underground & Nico. It had a delayed release for reasons, one being that they needed a special kind of technology for the “Peel slowly and see” gimmick to work. If you don’t know, basically, on the original vinyl copy, you could peel the banana off revealing a smaller, flesh-colored banana. It was awesome and it still is, not unlike this album.
The album opens with Sunday Morning, which was added to the album at the last minute. It wasn’t even produced by Andy Warhol, who produced the rest of the album. It was penciled in at the last minute because they thought this album needed another single. So in December 1966, Sunday Morning was released, a song about staying up and drinking on Saturday night and seeing the beauty of a Sunday morning. It captures that feeling pretty perfectly, but some first-time listeners, like 8 year-old me, might be a little turned off by it. My family members hyped this album up as, like, the greatest rock album of all time. I loved rock, count me in and it opens with ***ing dream pop. Yeah, no thanks, I’ll avoid ever listening to the album for another 2 years. That’s actually true. I first tried listening to this album over the summer in between 3rd and 4th grade. Then one day in the September that I went into 6th grade, I was scouring YouTube looking for music to play and this album was in my recommended. Yeah sure, why not, I might give it another chance. This song, man… It was another couple of days before I listened to the album in full because no way could this album ever top the perfection that is Sunday Morning. Spoiler alert, it did, but I listened to this song so many times, and it didn’t get old. It still hasn’t gotten old for me. This song hit me differently the second time I listened to it. I don’t know why, I guess a lot had happened in those 26 months, and when I say a lot had happened, believe me, a lot of *** happened. I could write three War and Peaces about what happened, but for the sake of brevity, I won’t. This song is so pretty, it’s unbelievable. I feel like I’m going to ruin something just listening to it. This song’s pretty amazing.
When I said that I tried listening to Sunday Morning and stopped after that, that was a white lie. I listened to I’m Waiting For The Man as well, and believe it or not, I actually loved it. I never listened to the rest of the album for another 26 months, and this time I actually mean it, trust. I still love this song to pieces, but now that the rest of the album has been so listened to by me, this song stands out less compared to the rest of songs on the album. I still love it a whole lot, though. It’s a radical change from Sunday Morning, this is flat out proto-punk about a white guy who goes to Harlem to get heroin. That’s another theme throughout this essay; heroin. I’m definitely not complaining. This song kicks ass, from John Cale’s scary good backwards piano to Lou Reed’s deadpan monotone spoken word yet still somehow wonderfully expressive vocals. Yeah, don’t ask me how he made that work, I don’t know. This somehow manages to be one of the least good tracks on this divine album. That does not mean I don’t like it, I love it more than many other songs. It’s I’m Waiting For The Man, man.
Femme Fatale is the first of 3 songs on the album to feature Nico on vocals, and her vocals polarize people, although many agree she’s all good, man. I am in the majority, folks, Nico’s ***ing awesome. Femme Fatale isn’t the craziest or most straightforward song she songs on this album, which can make it feel like sort of the “Doesn’t Count” of the 3D brothers. But it really does, because not only does it showcase Nico’s talents well, like the disconnected-ness in her vocals, but it’s a great, little song. It’s a pretty song that apparently, I heard Nico didn’t like the title of. That might be why she never sings the words “femme fatale”, leaving it up to Lou and Sterling to create an amazing chorus. Thank you, guys. It’s about a… femme fatale. It’s probably one of the better songs about a femme fatale. So yeah, this song’s pretty good.
Venus In Furs is one of those songs where when you first listen to it, it immediately hits you. When it starts, you think to yourself “Wow, this song is so cool, I love the sound”. Sterling Morrison said it was his favorite Velvets track because he thought it came closest to having the sound that they wanted to have. When it starts out, it sounds really cool and then we get the chorus and the key change and this song goes from great to advanced great. Some people might think that chorus just sounds like noise, I think it’s really beautiful. To this day, it’s still my favorite song on the album and one of my favorite songs of all time. The song opens spectacularly in surreal, mind-blowingly immersive fashion with the words “Shiny, shiny… Shiny boots of leather” and ostrich guitar. The fact that this song exists is really pretty surreal to me. The title, the style, the lyrics, everything feels just so odd. In a good way. The Velvets never topped this song, at least not for me. This song just feels tailor-made for me, it’s just insane to me. This song clearly influenced drone rock strongly, and it’s definitely my favorite drone rock song.
Run Run Run could just as easily be called Bob Dylan’s 666th Dream and I don’t think it would change a thing. Seriously, this song sounds like a messed up Bob Dylan song along with a John Lee Hooker song. Not that I’m complaining. I love both Bob Dylan and John Lee Hooker, and this song is awesome. Perhaps one of the ultimate garage rock songs of all time, Run Run Run pairs drug use with religious lyrics and makes it work amazingly. Teenage Mary, Marguerita Passion, Seasick Sarah, Beardless Harry, all amazing Lou characters that are either taking drugs or in need of a fix. This song also immerses you into the seedy underworld of 1960s New York that I could live in all day. I might not feel the same way if I actually were to live in it all day, but it’s just a cool-ass song. I love the part about a minute and 20 seconds in where the noise abuse truly starts up. Amazing song.
All Tomorrow’s Parties is the second song Nico sings on this album, and it’s my favorite and probably the best. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this album has been a mix of genres so far and it’s been mixing those genres pretty seamlessly. So when a 6-minute shoegaze masterpiece comes after the ultimate psychedelic garage rock song, it somehow works well. Not only well, but amazingly well. This is one of my favorite songs of all time, and my… 3rd favorite song on the album. That’s how damn good this album is. All Tomorrow’s Parties is not the standout track. The song’s about a beautiful, petite blonde woman who loses two of her kids. Jesus, no wonder this song didn’t chart. The lyrical content was not really talked about in pop music in 1967 and it still isn’t talked about all that much. Andy Warhol called this his favorite Velvet Underground song, and I don’t blame him. It’s dark, evoking, sexy, it’s a perfect Velvet Underground song. It's also either my favorite or my 2nd favorite shoegaze song of all time behind Loveless' When You Sleep. And that’s the end of side 1, but songs that are dark, evoking, sexy and perfect Velvet Underground songs are on side 2 as well. Which ones, you might ask? Try the first one on the side.
Heroin is in my blood. Maybe not literally, but this song did something to me. Once I started listening to it, I couldn’t stop. It made me feel like I was a man when I dropped the needle. When I tell you things weren’t quite the same, I mean it. I felt like Jesus’ son, I thought this was the most badass thing in the world. And in a way, I still do. Because it is, goddamn it. The most experimental of experimental rock songs, a 7-minute epic neither condoning or condemning heroin, but just describing what it’s like taking it and it sounds this awesome. I thought Lou Reed must’ve had an IQ of 2000 to write a song like this. It’s a beautiful song about one of the ugliest things in existence. Something I find masterful is the fact that the drumbeat gets faster in the opening, as to mean the narrator’s shooting up and his heartbeat is getting faster and faster until it makes him feel like he’s a man. And I know that 420 wasn’t a thing in 1967 and that it’s about marijuana, but Lou totally says the word “heroin” 4 minutes and 20 seconds into the song. I don’t care if it’s actually 4 minutes and 18 seconds in, I choose to live in my fantasy world. I know I’ve said this word so many times, but this song is so immersive. From the opening line “I don’t know just where I’m going” to “I wish that I’d sailed the darkened seas on a great big clipper ship” to what I personally think might be the best song lyrics of all time, “Because when the smack begins to flow and I really don’t care anymore about all the Jim-Jims in this town and all the politicians making crazy sounds and everybody puttin’ everybody else down and all the dead bodies piled up in mounds”. Lyrically, this might just be the best song ever created by anybody. The lyrics evoke a feeling of depression and worthlessness with the opening line, fear with lines like “‘Cause when the blood begins to flow, when it shoots up the dropper’s neck, when I’m closin’ in on death, you can’t help me, not you guys”, anxiety, depression and worthlessness with the line “I wish that I was born a thousand years ago” and finally, the desperate feeling of wanting to get away with lines like “Away from the big city, where a man could be free of all of the evils of this town and of himself and those around”. And I didn’t even mention the one that makes you feel every emotion a song like this can make you feel, the forever iconic “Oh, and I guess that I just don’t know”. I really could just talk about this song for a while, it’s that good. This is the defining song of the album, it makes ugly topics beautiful while simultaneously making beautiful topics ugly, it’s scary, it’s sexy, it’s grim, it’s dystopian, it leaves a lot of things up to ambiguity, it starts awesome and elegant and ends on ***ed up noise abuse but continues to be awesome. *** it, Venus In Furs has finally been dethroned, this is the best song on the album and now that I’ve analyzed it, it might just be the best song of all time. I’m aware that I’ve written a lot about just the lyrics of this song, and I can’t just make that the entire essay (although let’s be honest, I totally could). Heroin is in my blood.
After the breakdown that was the ending of Heroin, the album transports us to a world of prostitution and jangle pop with There She Goes Again. You’d think that would disorient you, but like I said, this album has the ability to blend genres seamlessly, and it does just that. Yeah, no surprise, this song is awesome. I only have one small gripe about it, and it’s not even really a gripe. It’s the fact that the riff seems to mirror the riff in the Rolling Stones’ version of Hitch Hike. I’ve played the two songs at the same time and it sounds incredibly similar. Good artists copy, great artists steal, am I right? Not that I actually 100% think they’re stealing, but the riff is familiar. The song is about a prostitute who tries running away from her pimp, and the pimp gets pretty pissed off. In a negative review for the album, I saw some jackass say that this song glorifies prostitution. If it did, that’s not a bad thing, but it doesn’t. How does it glorify prostitution, dumbass? Get back to my comment on your albumoftheyear.org review that you… deleted. Alright, this song’s awesome. I love the guitar on this song, I love Lou’s monotone yet angrily expressive vocals. Really, just another hit for this amazing album.
I’ll Be Your Mirror is the third and final song on the album that Nico sings, and it is by far the most normal and straightforward. It’s basically just a normal love song. It may be the Nico song on this album that I love the least, but I still love it. Apparently, Lou wrote it about Nico, which would and wouldn’t surprise me. I hear he thought she sounded like a computer during the making of the album, but Andy was so insistent that she sing on the album. If that’s true and/or my memory’s serving me right, thank you, Andy, for keeping one of the album’s best qualities. This is the same 1967 album as Heroin, Venus in Furs and the upcoming Black Angel’s Death Song. That’s insane. Everything this album attempts, it does well and it has my respect for that. This is a really pretty, straightforward love song.
The penultimate song on the album, and arguably the last song song, is The Black Angel’s Death Song, which has grown on me. At first, whenever I listened to this album, I usually stopped listening at I’ll Be Your Mirror because, well, I didn’t like this song that much. But I appreciate it now as the classic that it is. It’s another dark look into the seedy, drug underworld of 1960s New York featuring great lyrics. John Cale’s viola playing is odd but it pays off. This song is both a consensual orgasm for your ears and a sexual assault on your ears. It’s rough, it makes you feel like you’re in an alleyway and a train station. Basically my 2 least favorite spots in New York. I love all the lyrics on this song, so I’ll just list my favorites; “Myriad had choice of his fate, set themselves out upon a plate for him to choose, what had he to lose?”, “With his hair in his face and a long, splintered cut from the knife of GT” and “Sacrificials remain, make it hard to forget”. This song is amazing.
And the album ends with European Son, which is both a fitting and out-of-character way to end this album. A lot of people don’t like this song and consider it a poor ending to an otherwise flawless album. I don’t know, I like it. It was dedicated to Lou’s college professor, Delmore Schwartz. He apparently hated rock lyrics, which might be why this song is mostly an instrumental. There’s a guitar callback to the riff of Run Run Run, and other than that, I don’t really have much to say about this song. It’s 8 minutes of John Cale throwing a plate across the studio, and that’s OK.
The Velvet Underground & Nico is an album that you might not love right away, but when you start to love it, you really start to love it. I definitely didn’t love it right away, but when I loved it… *** went down. Everything changed, I finally had meaning thanks to this ugly yet beautiful masterpiece. This is my favorite album of 1967, which is my favorite year for music. It’s my favorite album of the 60s, which is probably my favorite decade for music. Is it my favorite album of all time? Maybe. It’s pretty much tied for that #1 spot with London Calling. The fact that this album exists is just so surreal to me, it feels like the band went into the studio and went “Hey, let’s make an album specifically for a person who won’t be conceived for another 44 years and whose parents won’t be conceived for about 6 years”. Although that’s really not fair, because this album has had impacts on a lot of people. It’s a core part of many people’s musical identities, like mine, and just a part of their regular identity. My banana shirt is my favorite shirt, I had to do a “figurative language” project in 6th grade and for alliteration, the example I used was “Severin, Severin speaks so slightly”. Not even kidding. The look my teacher gave me, man. She was like “What does that mean?”, since I guess she was uncultured. For pretty much all of 6th grade, I became known as the kid with the banana shirt, since everyone was uncultured. If those kids were smart, they would’ve listened to the banana album and realized it’s more than just a shirt, it’s a surreal and unforgettable experience that can be ugly, grim, beautiful and just ***ing perfect. I don’t love to always use this word, but this album’s a masterpiece. If you didn’t like it when you tried listening to it for the first time and you still haven’t given it another chance, I urge you to. Because you might change due to this wonderful work of art.
