Chelsea Girl

Perfect? No. Good? No. Mediocore? No. Bad? No. Garbage? Yes.

We all piled on Rebecca black for having no talent but Nico makes the list of albums You Must Listen To Or Else You'll Die? At least RB's song was catchy and she paid for being famous with money rather than blow jobs. A goat being vivisectioned would be more melodic and in key. If I could give this zero stars I would, Nico is the fucking worst.

Alright, I'll say it. I'm a sucker for this dark, pretentious, avant bullshit. I like the instruments, I like the vocals, I like the production. This is fanfuckingtastic.

Don't deny the greatness. Don't deny the sadness. Don't deny the beauty.

Fuck off flute

It sounds medieval and boring. In addition to being grating, the singer's voice doesn't fit the backing instruments at all, and the audio tracks sound like they were unmixed or at the very least mixed extremely poorly. Nothing in this album meshes, and I don't understand why this would be on this list.

not a fan of her voice. I'm guessing this is held in high regard due to her Warhol / Velvet Underground association? First one in awhile I opened Spotify to see how much was left...

You call it ‘artistic’...I call it ‘dog in pain’. Not gonna lie. This was one tough listen. It literally could be used as a form of torture. I could just imagine a Russian spy opting to spill the beans in preference to being subjected to another tune from Nico. Someone please tell this woman she cannot sing, for everyone else’s sake. The out of tune droning with the comical flute playing in the background had me Googling if this album was in fact a parody. Unfortunately it is not and it is very real. Apparently real enough to be selected into this list and that’s embarrassing. The only reason anyone would ever choose this album is because they are insecure and think selecting the shameful piece of noise would somehow elevate their coolness by the ‘in’ crowd. Hopefully Nico was locked up and institutionalised after this and they threw away her key. -100 Stars!

It's painful, in so many ways. It goes beyond interesting and weird into the awful.

Well friends, that was painful. Vocals are flat, monotone and boring. Some of the instrumentals would have been good as background music, but then Nico starts singing again. And what was that noise about 2/3 of the way through "It Was A Pleasure Then"? I've tried to avoid giving out 1's as a rule, but I think this one deserves it.

Nauseatingly bad. Two more albums this bad and I’m quitting this list.

Absolute shit. Production is awful - guitars quiet and muddy with terrible tone. Would have been better without strings and flutes. Bad lyrics, worked into even worse melodies. Not as smart as it thinks it is. Ended up skipping through a lot as I couldn't take it any more. Pretentious wank.

The instrumentation is lovely and Nico's vocals sound raw and authentic. No autotune here. Deliciously soothing.

Great album. Love her voice and the instrumentation is beautiful. Like getting a Velvet Underground record with just Nico vocals!

This album was interesting for several reasons. Nico's deep and untrained voice has a way of cutting through the often lush instrumentation that lends it an air of mystery and sadness. This is truly an enigmatic album, songs written by men sung by a woman who nobody really seemed to know. I was a bit tired of it by the end, but I believe this album deserves a few more listens.

It is rare that I can't make it through a full album even it's not my thing. Nico's voice makes me want to cut my ears off.

fuck off nazi cunt

The other members of VU help Nico with her own debut, and it's full of beautiful folk tunes with lush classical arrangements, sorrowful retrospective lyrics, and a deep emotional voice. It's dreamy and entrancing with the mesmerizing guitars and bright bursts of flutes and Caleb's viola. We starts with a few emotional pop tracks. Then we reach the avant-garde dissonant "It Was a Pleasure Then" which I actually like, especially Nick's angelic vocals. It's a homage to the VU's debut. Following that is my favorite (after "These Days"), a 7.5 minute depressing story about the lives of her fellow acolytes of Warhol. Great chorus, and the flutes and viola work best here. Next two tracks are vibrant and happy. "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams" is mythical. I really like the harp instrument. Flute is excessive here. "Eulogy to Lenny Bruce" is a minimalist finale, probably what Nico wanted for the rest of the tracks, but it is a bit dull and forgettable. Nico wasn't a fan of this album cause the studio replaced the drums and extra guitars for flutes. I'm curious what it'd sound like with percussion, but I think the lack of it adds a mythical sound to it. The flutes do feel over-the-top and take the spotlight too much, feeling unnecessary at times. But there are moments where I felt the flutes do work in her favor. Finally, the production is dated, with bad studio mixing, which makes for a dumb speaker situation. But if you're high and put on headphones or set up your room just right, it could make for an immersive experience. I really like most tracks, with a good variety and each standing out. I could definitely see how they could improve though. Very curious to hear more like this.

I like the music well enough, a kind of low-key folk rock with some pleasing baroque flourishes. The songs are pretty great. 'These Days', 'It Was a Pleasure Then' and 'Eulogy to Lenny Bruce' stand out in particular as moving, eery numbers. Let's face facts, it's Nico's voice that will divide audiences. I found it winningly and affectedly unmusical about a quarter of the time, utterly bemusing for the rest. It's got character, it is instantly recognisable and occasionally it meets the music at such an angle that it becomes a thing of oblique beauty. Not very often, though.

It's so bad that even Nico herself refuses to listen to it. Wondering if this album was included in the 1001 as an example of good intentions gone horribly wrong?

Bottom of the list fire me

This was horrible. Not my genre, awful voice, weird sounding pieces in between. Never again please.

Oufff. No thank you

Just Painful, it was difficult to finish this album.

🤮🤢😷☠️💩💩💩💩

Did not connect with any of that.

I knew Nico was quite the tortured soul, but it's through this app that I've learned that she allegedly indulged in racist tirades in private sometimes (and probably even did worse than that at one point!). It's a damn shame, because I have always loved her voice, whether with the Velvet Underground or without. But I understand why some folks would rate her one star because of that. Call that karmic balance. That said, I'm not gonna deny the pleasure I've had listening to Nico's voice for years, even though said pleasure is tinted now. Because that would make me a hypocrite. Few artists can sing out of tune, and in such an idiosyncratic way, while actually *adding* to the songs, and not ruining them. People complaining about her performances in this section should learn that good art doesn't necessarily mean perfection. Frailty and flaws can actually provide a lot of precious emotions to a certain subset of listeners. And dismissing that mere fact as "pretentious snobbery" is quite a paradoxical stance. Snobbery usually pays attention to what's perfect and pristine. And *Chelsea Girl* can't be judged by the usual standards anyway. That's where its peculiar quaint charms lie for some. Also, I can't help but notice that the vast majority of reviewers who gave this album one star never finished this project anyway. A lot of them used quite hateful words to boot--and, karmic balance or not, those accusations had nothing to do with Nico's intermitent racism in the first place. So, in this case, why all the hate? Well, it seems to me that this app was probably a bit of an ordeal for those casual listeners. Because, yeah, the 1001 album app routinely takes you out of your comfort zone. And unfortunately, you have close-minded individuals everywhere, both in the so-called "plebe" and in the elite. That's life. If you keep the debate in purely artistic terms, who are the close-minded, elitist reviewers, really? To be perfectly fair, and if it amounts to be accused of being an "elitist' whatever album by Nico you choose for such a list, I would rather have the 1001 albums book choosing *The Marble Index* and *Desertshore* instead of *Chelsea Girl* while I'm at it. Obviously, that would test the limits of those close-minded listeners even further--those two LPs are such *striking* records, far more personal than *Chelsea Girl*, but also more *prophetic*. Like, Nico was the *OG* in those two seminal LPs, the "Original Goth". A missing link between the first "medieval" meaning of the word and its post-punk reenactment a decade later. And this makes her one-of-a-kind as well, as "difficult" as her persona was. To be clear, I'm not saying that you should "separate the person from the artist" here. You just can't. It's just that sometimes, there's a grey area, especially with relevant performers with a history of mental disorders, and especially when those performers passed away some time ago. I can't listen to Kanye West these days, for instance, it's too much, and probably too soon after the unforgivable horrific words he has repeatedly uttered in public for too long now. But denying the man's impact on popular music in the last twenty years would be nonsensical. Hell, NO, I'm not condoning the dreadful things Ye said, even under the pretext of his supposed mental imbalance. But I'm also stating the facts: if Kanye had never had the impact he has had before, far less people would have noticed the dumb, dangerous "concepts" that spurt forth from his foamy mouth later on. Which means that the man's past artistic accomplishments are part of the sad equation, whether you like it or not. Nico's impact on popular culture as a creator and a perfomer was far more limited than Kanye, in comparison. But it's there. It's undeniable for people with some knowledge of 20th century music history--so-called "elitism" be damned. You can't "unknow" what you know. As a consequence, I"m still giving 5 stars for what this album is, that is to say an incredibly original recording, either for the times it was released or for now--and one that ties in with later important developments for both the artist and for "modern" music in general. That being said, it's highly probable that I won't include *Chelsea Girls* in my own list of "essential albums", in spite of that 5-star grading (a very rare exception to the way I use that rating to select my albums). My grade just represents my personal assessments of this record's merits. It won't change its low "global score" a bit anyway. But more importantly, it's important to undertand that I don't want to force my personal assessment on individuals shocked by some of the things found online about Nico. I respect such individuals' sensibility too much for that. And of course, I'm not gonna die on a hill that no one should ever fight for. Ever. Even if Nico's problematic words and acts were not "public", it seems that most witnesses are clear about what they heard or saw. And music, mental heath issues and possible traumatic experiences aside, those reported events make Christa Pāffgen look like quite a despicable figure. Number of albums left to review: 400 Number of albums from the list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 271 Albums from the list might* include in mine later on: 144 (including this one) Albums from the list I won't include in mine (many others are more essential to me): 186

The story behind the production makes better than total sense when you hear it, that's for certain. But somehow the disjoint circles all the way around and brings Chelsea Girl together somehow. Irreverently, this makes me think of the Shaggs or Björk forced to work with certain session musicians. More than a touch of odd, here.

I love Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground so much that I have an automatic soft spot for Nico, but I'm not sure it quite carries a full album for me. I kind of liked the flutey compositions that I take it she hated. Sort of interested to hear some of the later stuff she had more control on.

Needs an injection of The Velvet Underground. It's nice, but a bit boring. The kind of thing Iris Law listens to on the tube I'd imagine. 🦢 Chelsea rent girl, Chelsea rent girl, whoooaaa whooooaaa

Really beautiful. Some of the Nico albums are hidden gems, and this is no exception. It's more folky than her second one which I listened to last year and enjoyed. Probably largely down to the flutes which I understand she hated but I don't mind here. Her voice is somewhat jarring against the backdrop and not typically folky at all, but that's part of what makes it interesting. I did prefer the more Avant Garde offerings of the Marble Index, and oddly was a bit put off by the one here that leaned slightly in that direction (it was a pleasure then).

Enjoyed it, but still not fully on board with Nico's vocals.

strangely haunting and beautiful music. Her voice is unique and I am sure the style was fresh when this was released in 1967. 4/5

Very calm and ethereal

Et bien moi j'ai beaucoup apprecié cet album, et d'ailleurs j'en profite pour dire à rob que je l'emmerde.

This was going to be 2 stars, but I recognized that some of these songs have been in Wes Anderson movies. Giving them some context, and associating them with a time and place really allowed me to appreciate these songs more. They are certainly 'of an era'. They're the kind of thing you'd put on when someone broke up with you, or if you were having a very specifically-themed party.

Did one track feature Kurt Zouma and his cat?

Like being punched in the head by the sound of boredom.

Oof. I hated this. Some pretty instrumentation on some songs, but not all, and her voice was terrible. Songs were also slow and sad. Not a fan. Song I didn’t hate as much: “Somewhere There’s a Feather.”

Fucking horrible. I turned it off after 20 minutes cause it was too boring. These Days is still a jam tho

Headache machine

Not my kind of music

Nope

Voice of a chain smoking angel I love her

Little Sister

I liked this a lot, five stars.

It might feel a little underwhelming, even jagged in places, but I love the simplicity. Being very familiar with The Velvet Underground & Nico, I had not heard this but I'm glad I finally did. It feels as though this album will grow with the listener over time.

It's funny, because I love the first three Nico albums, but I don't really enjoy the banana one, which is supposed to be a milestone of its generation. Maybe it's an age thing; I see that album as a cornerstone for the modernity era _of my dad_. Maybe the shock factor is lost and that's the reason I don't really enjoy it. Whatever. This debut from Nico is haunting. It's not as folkish as the second one (which I adore), but it's already charming and tremulous. Definitely coming back to it, not sure if while driving because it could lead me to a rapture-induced accident.

Really calm and beautiful

One of the great essential truths of rock music, in my mind, is that you don’t have to be a well-trained, professional musician to make a great and interesting record. Ambition can outweigh ability and it shouldn’t be considered detrimental to the music you create. Chelsea Girls is singular and unique, experimental but ultimately not overly formidable. Sadly, this record seems to have been produced with Nico’s input cast aside and ignored, which is truly unfortunate and one has to wonder what it may have sounded like if she had had her way.

People may not comprehend that certain voices like that of Robert Plant or Brian Johnson, are excruciating to me and yet the gurgling drain that is Nico is far more palatable. Yes, there are conflicts. It would be treacherous to disrespect the person I was named after. She was one of my folks’ first musical loves, and I was taken to one of her gigs when I was but a wee nipper. She’s been in my musical consciousness since before I was born, so my heart is very firmly in her camp. Even though I prefer her album, The End, this is is quirky and wacky and completely lovely. Chelsea Girls is a classic.

LOVE LOVE LOVE NICO! she’s an icon. i want to live like her

good. dreamy, reminds me of belle and sebastian.

Good chamber folk/baroque pop album with hints of avantgarde. Nico's voice (and strong German accent) is very distinctive, instantly recognisable which may not be the cup of tea for many people but undoubtely it brings a lot of character to these songs. I like the arrangements on this album, though the production wasn't that great. Overall it must've been a fresh and different album when it came out in 1967. 3.5/5.

The sad songs are so good here and the one-two punch in the opening would be impossible for almost any artist to maintain. Such is the case here as the wheels kind of fell off for me with the song "It Was a Pleasure Then," but then I do feel like the album recovers pretty well and finishes strong with the Lenny Bruce eulogy. Great sounding record across the board though! Love the guitar sounds. Random comparison: this album made me think about Jeremy Enigk's "Return of the Frog Queen." Sort of a spin on acoustic/folk music, with a strange voice people either love or hate, and orchestration runs through most of it. Probably shouldn't work, but it does somehow. I dig it.

Look, I like violins as much as the next person--maybe even more--but damn these overdubs (like they're trying to make every song sound like "Eleanor Motherfucking Rigby"). They're so tacked on, not matching Nico's voice at all, which sounds like she's pulling her jaw back into her throat. And then just listen to "Winter Song": the power is right there in the (rather frightening) lyrics. We don't need a flute to tell us "this is a pastoral song, in case you couldn't figure it out". RYM ranks "It Was a Pleasure Then" as the worst track on the album, but I think it's the best because it's not got those damn overdubs. Everything is more real--the music, the vocals. It's pretty VU at its heart, too, what with the short bursts of howling feedback and the minimalist experimental vibe threatening to explode into a welcome cacophony that never comes. Nope. Bring the flautist and string quartet back in. Break's over!

8/10. What if Leonard Cohen was a girl?

It's not bad actually, I think some of you just hate women.

By turns, both exquisite and exasperating. Rated highly for "These Days" and the other Jackson Browne-y contributions; rated 'interesting' for the VU-adjacent stuff, which have their moments. "Ugh, this is boring and she sings so badly off key" - actual quote from a teenager whose favorite artist is Doja Cat. I worry for the youth of today

Nico often gets some slack for not really being able to sing, which I think is unfair as Lou Reed couldn’t really sing either. Anyway, this is a pretty strong if repetitive collection of songs with amazing orchestration, with the solemnly longing These Days being a clear standout

My ears yearned so badly for at least a little vibrato. Hauntingly wonderful tunes.

She has a lovely voice, interesting subject matter, and occasionally cool arrangements. But it does plod at a fairly droney tempo unfortunately. A good album, but more as a piece of context for a brilliant one.

I think Nico’s sexy midtown Manhattan girl vibe has carried her reputation a lot further than the music deserves. Some high points (Chelsea Girl, these days) but mostly forgettable in my opinion.

First off, f**k the Velvet Underground. I never liked them. EVER. I always hated that rock critics thought they were so amazing. The garage DIY has to come with a bit of skill. They're sloppy, too sloppy, and a bunch of druggies. Then there's Lou Reed, who can't keep a tune if his gloves were covered with velcro. So now we come to this album. And quite frankly I couldn't help but wonder if the songs would have hit better if either the singer was in a higher pitch, or used some vibrato. As it is, it sounds like someone assembled a band and the producer brought in the girlfriend to sing. Maybe she would have been better with punkier songs. She doesn't fit the mood of the songs they're playing. NEXT.

Nico's voice is terrible. If it wasn't for her Andy Warhol or Velvet Underground connection would she even be on this list? Although that's probably the point. You need to hear this thing that was created by Warhol, and this odd songbird that was one of his things. The musical arrangements are ok, but maybe a bit overdone in their attempt to add elaborate strings to the other instrument simplicity. I always talk about the 80's as being a weird time, but man the swingin' 60's, they might take the cake. The 80's was a bunch of people with no clue doing weird things. But the 60's can be downright pretentious. That's what this album felt like.

First Listen. At first, I didn't like it much. But, as the day went on I started enjoying it more and more. This is definitely different than what I was expecting. I like her when she sang with the Velvet Underground - and that was what I was expecting. This album definitely sound like the 1967, flower-power, peace-and-love scene, and I thought she would have more of that Berlin rock sound. After getting used to the sound, I started liking it more and found myself singing along a couple of times. I'll give it a strong 2/5 for now. It might be a 3/5 next time I hear it.

Honestly just... dull. The arrangements were okay, even interesting sometimes. The songwriting was passable. But man, Nico herself just does absolutely nothing for me. She was bearable on that Velvet Underground record, but here she has nothing to support her. Also, apparently she is super duper racist, so I am glad I didn't care for her music lol.

This fucking sucked. Dreary, whiny, dull, self indulgent SHIT.

I know and like very much the album by The Velvet Underground and Nico. So I really expected something special when this album turned up. But, oh no, ... first song ... ok, it's terrible but something better must come second song ... ok, it's also terrible but something better must come third song ... ok, it's also terrible but something better must come and so it continued until tenth song ... oh, no, it's even worse than the first nine A really terribly boring album

Holy crap, she's a horrible singer. Note to Andy Warhol, Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, and Jackson Browne: you can't hear good looks. I might have given this a 2 because the underlying music was often pleasant enough but then I had to sit through "It Was a Pleasure Then" which reminds me why I dislike the Velvet Underground so vehemently. Feedback, awful guitar playing...yup, it's the Velvet Underground. This is one of the few albums that made me regret my commitment to listening to every album at least two times. Awful.

6 Based on this scale: 1 - 0 to 19 2 - 20 to 39 3 - 40 to 59 4 - 60 to 79 5 - 80 to 100 This is bad. The only thing that made this not get a 0 overall was the instrumentation. The vocals were terrible. Absolute waste of time and this is only an album you should hear before you die if you've been convicted of crimes against humanity and must be punished accordingly.

No. Please God no. Nooooooooooo! Awful

Bloody racket

The blueprint for this album was laid out by Nico's performance on 'Femme Fatale' off of the Velvet's banana album; a lush and gorgeous instrumental that had all the life sucked out of it by her drowsy and uninteresting vocals. On Chelsea Girl, that same process is repeated 10 times in what is a 45 minute snooze-fest that perfectly encapsulates Nico's mediocrity as an artist. It is utterly remarkable how many listeners gloss over just how tone deaf Nico truly is. Each track sounds like she recorded the vocals before even hearing any instrumentals. Her vocal range and register are as wallpaper and monotone as one could imagine, yet this album has been lauded by critics as a timeless masterpiece. Not only did this album fail to push any boundaries, it hardly got out of centre field. The only redeemable quality going for this record are its arrangements and production. For the 10 to 15 seconds before Nico's voice puts me to sleep, the instrumentals are whimsical and pleasant on the ears, with the clear intention for a strong vocalist to realise the potential of each song. Nico squanders that potential time and time again, that said it would've made for some nice lobby music as an instrumental album. Nico was essentially handed these beautiful instrumentals on a silver platter, to which she adds absolutely nothing of note. In the same year as the Beach Boys release Pet Sounds; an album filled with diverse arrangements, ingenious songwriting and adventurous vocal melodies, it is one of the great mysteries as to how this album has remained relevant over half a century later.

Just how old is Jackson Browne? Was he signed by Columbia when he was 4? How is it that These Days pops up on an album made in 1967, about 6 years before he recorded it? This odd record has so many cultural intersections, The Velvets and Jackson writing most of the songs and poor Tom Wilson having to do the impossible and "produce" this. To think he went from Highway 61 Revisited to Nico. Andy Warhol wreaked havoc on popular culture, and for Nico alone he stands condemned. If the climate change activists really want to make their case they should throw Campbell's soup over his Campbell's Soup paintings and then stick Nico album covers all over the soup, what a fitting finale that would be. Nico, dead on arrival. She'd be the Schrodinger's Cat of popular music, except Andy opened the box. Imagine wandering into a New York coffeehouse and sitting down to Nico in 1967, what price a cup of joe? The Wikipedia notes on this are hilarious, that she cried because Tom put strings and a flute on this record and denied her drums. I can't begin to contemplate what he was trying to do to cover up her appalling drone. There are some fine arrangements here in a desperate search for someone who can actually sing. I will never forgive her for the rendition of These Days (ditto I'll Keep it with Mine). I had to immediately play Glen Campbell's (oh aye, there's a Campbell's theme here) brilliant 2008 version, where, with the onset of Alzheimer's looming large, he so perfectly captured the pain of a four year old Jackson Browne lamenting day of yore. Nico needs to be deleted, thrown into the dustbin of history.

Manages boredom and irritation. "It was a pleasure then" is a collection of cacophony. Did those great songwriters (Dylan, Jackson, Hardin) write bad songs, or did she wreck them? After listening to some other versions, the answer is that Nico can't sing

It was a folk album. I did not care for Velvet Underground and I did not care this album even though it is a solo album. Lyrically unnoteworthy. Nothing about it was good. I ending up skipping through some of the songs because I just wanted it to end.

Nico has talent... if talent is defined as an ability to sing every other note flat. Awful to listen to.

She sounds bunged up and posh. I sound bunged up and posh sometimes too, but I'm not sure it's something to aspire to.

Awful. Sounded like Joni Mitchel, if she were terrible.

I think this algorithm is fucking with me. They gave me this after I went about panning Velvet Underground. This is a slight improvement altho the German accent makes it seem almost satirical. Getting some nice Beatles vibes off the melodies and chord progressions but generally I found it a painful process trying to just get thru it. Had to listen to it one song at a time with breaks in between.

An album that really hits all the notes on boring music from the sixties. An album that drags on for an eternity that has absolutely nothing to say.

Dreary, one-note. The only reason it’s not forgettable is because of how annoying Nico’s voice is over 10 songs.

Moany and repetitive

nope. Sound like someone is singing in the kitchen to themselves, kind of amateur

She tires me pretty soon. Nice instrumentation though.

pas inéressé

J'aurais envie d'écrire une joke, mais l'album me laisse tellement indifférent que j'ai rien de drôle à dire. SKIPPPPP

lo peor que he oído en mi vida

meh, a forgettable album

Absolutely captivating. Gorgeous melodies and instrumentation. Played 3 times today. Strangely comforting. Iconic and singular voice. 5/5

Why does everyone hate this album? It's so good and that flute, my goooooooooooooooooooood.

I heard she wasn’t into the orchestration. Sorry I know it was her record but I feel like she was wrong. The sparse guitar backing, Nico’s haunting vocals and the orchestration all work perfectly together.

Good artist

such a classic, love nico so muchh!! her voice and her music is so unique, i’m so happy to have the chance to listen to this album since, i didn’t have the chance to do so. i love how individual the instrumentals are compared to the melody, apart from the strings.

Breathtaking album. The strings are exquisite and I adore Nico's voice

Songs that reach the heart

I love it! I will marry this album!

LOVELY BEST ALBUM EVER I LOVE THIS SHIT

YES. Love Nico. She managed to bottle some real feelings. Captures ups and downs, melancholy yet hopeful. I really dig the strings.. pretty interesting that Nico was opposed, haha. Feels like such a pure sound. Maybe this album could be considered a gumbo, since she was just surrounded by talented folks and contributors. All those cool New York cats. Just feels like so many layers of style and juice. I love everything about this album.