Chelsea Girl

Nico was the best thing that ever happened to The Velvet Underground. I’m so glad I discovered her hauntingly beautiful voice.

Complete and utter dogshite! Is she tone deaf? All I can hear is Madeline Kahn singing in Blazing Saddles. Turned off by track 3!

Holy, mother of compression. What is with this mix? Anyways, this is awesome. What a beautiful and haunting voice!

Unheard originals from Lou AND Jackson PLUS TVU as session band...dang, how did Nico get so lucky?! The muted guitar and string quartet go a long way at making this sound like nothing else ever. Great melodies...haunting vocals...I love it. Is "These Days" an all-time great? I chuckled heartily when John Cale made his presence known (iykyk), lol.

Enough with the flute already...

I'd only ever heard "These Days" in the past, but after listening to the whole thing, I've no idea why I hadn't given it a proper go before. Nico's voice is truly something else, and I love the fact that there wasn't any kind of effects put over the top, allowing her talent to do the heavy lifting. A properly smooth and melancholic listen, in which every emotion is deeply felt and each song feels distinct. Just beautiful stuff.

It’s okay.

Reichlich schmalzig mit den Geigen und Flöten im Hintergrund. Aber die Frau scheint mir interessant zu sein - einflussreich in der Welt, aber ziemlich unbekannt in Deutschland.

How did so many talented people collaborate to produce such an awful album?

Her voice sits atop the background music or alternatively the music doesn't complement the voice. Maybe a mixing error?

not big into medieval 70s

Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame bullshit with these pretentious results! The famous musicians prop it up with mixed results. It all sounds the same. I'll pass. Thanks. The acid musta been real good.

Charming but ultimately boring. Reminds me of The Sad Princess (Sílene smutná princezna) film soundtrack, just without the fun or heart.

Nico didn’t even like this album tbh

3.5/5 but I’d round up. It’s not my favorite Nico album, as I really enjoy Desertshore but this is a strong collection of songs. It’s very tree, very charming, but also deeply tragic and melancholic. The accent sells the other-worldliness

Interesting albums, there were very slight hints of Olivia Rodrigo in some of the early songs. Some Joni Mitchell too. 6.1/10

1967 chamber baroque pop, Jackson browne, VU The fairest of the season It was a pleasure then I'll keep it with mine

Boring

Can't be arsed with robotic sounding European vocals.

Loved this album since I heard These Days about 20 years ago. Its not for everyone tbh but I like it.

can't explain why but some songs made me extremely anxious

This was like having Brunehilde sing British folk tunes. She's got a nice voice, but it was all too severe. Because of the disconnect, nothing connected with me. My rating: 2/5 horned helmets

Wow, so many huge names, such a mediocre album. I was set to give it 1 star, but listening through I could gradually see some good in it. I guess the best way I could describe it is pensive and brooding for the sake of being pensive and brooding. That said a lot of people with a lot more talent than me thought she was something special. So maybe it just went over my head. Regardless I won't be giving it a second chance. 2/5

Like a sad depressing dream that I couldn't wait to awaken from

Who?

Her voice isn’t THAT bad… it’s also not that good.

Nico has a consistent voice all throughout, i recognized these days and can see why it’s popular, i enjoyed how the album started but when i got to ‘it was a pleasure then’ it was not very enjoyable mainly because of the shreaky guitar, i did love the violins and my favorite song from the album was ‘wrap your troubles in dreams’ because of the violin plucking and flute. over all the album was pretty but i don’t think i’d listen again. this might be far fetched but her voice occasionally sounds a tiny tiny bit like sades especially in ‘eulogy to lenny bruce’

Very uninteresting did not care for her voice or any of the rest of this.

I was in a good music mood to start the album and had a very open mind and I liked it. Next section of the album I was in a bad music mood and it sounded bad. I guess I’ll average it because I’m just confused

You can hear her hesitance in her voice. I read up on it that she didn't like the overproduction of this album w/ the orchestra etc. I did like the vibe overall. Not a lot I would re-listen to but I enjoyed it and I like the complex emotion she put into it, even if she ended up being unhappy with the album.

Started off great, but then the medieval crap kicked in and made me upset. Why do they always have medieval stuff?

I am definitely reading too much into this album and can't seem to articulate it. There is a subversive pop element to this thing that is played completely straight. And I think that is what Andy warhol saw in her. The album is completely unhinged in the most normal way possible. Besides the fact that clearly everyone who had any involvement with it was so blitzed on drugs. Perfectly deranged.

"Guilty pleasure" is a phrase I try to avoid, for all the reasons a lot of critics try to avoid it - it's usually used as a backhanded put-down for genuinely enjoyable music that just doesn't happen to fit the critical consensus. So when I say this album is a guilty pleasure that's not what I mean. What I mean is that all the parts are excellent, from the songs (including several early Jackson Browne contributions) to the baroque pop instrumentation to Nico's otherworldly voice, already improved from her work on *Velvet Underground & Nico*. No, what I mean is that I feel a twinge of guilt at enjoying this while simultaneously knowing that the woman allegedly at its center was pushed out of the creative process almost entirely, that she disowned the finished result in shame, that she felt trapped into going through with the album at all in the first place by men who had their own artistic goals at heart entirely and valued hers not at all. And yeah, I suppose that's not all that uncommon an experience for women in music in any era, but is that supposed to make it okay? I find myself wanting to know what Nico *really* thinks and feels here, and instead I'm left contemplating Simone de Beauvoir's comment that mystery always belongs to the slave. "How long, babe, can you search for what's not lost?" she asks on Dylan's "I'll Keep It with Mine," and I've got no answer for her. A beautiful, fraught record.

thought i would enjoy more. low 3.

I found it interesting, but a very serious and dramatic sound dominates

wieso kommt sowas auf die liste? weil bekannte musiker dabei waren? schrott.

Etwas ruhig

But this girl can't even sing... Why she released a whole ass album?

Didn't enjoy

Not loving it. I finally heard a song I liked and then realized it had rolled into the VU record. Nico solo…I’ll pass

Amazing voice

A very sweet chill album. Very melancholic. I liked the strings and the flutes, and overall enjoyed this better than I expected. 3.5 stars, but I’ll round up.

some really good songs, and some not so much 3.6/5

I like that the album knows what it is and sticks to it. Overall I enjoyed feeling the atmosphere of the album, though I always feel that nico doesn’t try or expirement enough with her voice especially for such a low-key album that really focuses on the vocals… Minus points for the avant garde aspects

Beautiful. I worry for all the people who rated this 1 stars because they thought her singing was weird, this is pretty inoffensive, I'd hate to hear what they have to say when they hear something actually challenging. Go back to listening to Taylor Swift lol.

Ohh look at me I’m avant grade. No you’re just mono tone and boring sorry

Not anything all that great. Some decent songs. I'll say 2.5 - round down, because 3 seems too high.

Meh

Some of the songs are decent but a few are real grating. Clearly influenced by Velvet Underground folks.

These days is a great tune. 45 minutes of it seemed like a lifetime, her voice got extremely irritating.

I didn't realize that Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake had a child together. It's so cool that Nico really draws on both her parents sounds

Начало – песни, застрявшие в замкнутом круге, в перемешку с чем-то совершенно невразумительным. С Chelsea girls становится получше, но отсутствие какой-либо динамики просто убывает

Turns out Nico doesn't even think this is a good album.

Nico had the slightest, most delicate and fragile of talents and her finest moments were I'll be Your Mirror, Femme Fatale and All Tomorrow's Parties on the Velvet Underground's debut. But this largely ignored and forgotten work, her first solo album, comes close to those three icy masterpieces. Her singing voice is, at best, strangely withdrawn and more or less tuneful. Still, as the song goes, "It doesn't matter if you sing out of tune/So long as you're German" The orchestration on the songs - acoustic guitar, strings, occasionally an organ or a flute - just add to the Gothic decadence of it all. With John Cale & Lou Reed there are moments of real beauty and, let's face it, outright weirdness. You get the impression that she might not quite understand all of the lyrics she's singing, although Cale's and Reed's lyrics are not exactly transparent. There's only one genuine stinker here though: Eulogy for Lenny Bruce. Morbid and dull, I'm afraid. And Tim Hardin, who wrote it, is not John Cale. But that dull track aside, this is endlessly fascinating and more than a little bizarre. Like that's a bad thing!

Weird stuff but I liked it

I loved this! The guitar is beautiful throughout.

meh

Her English is better than my German. But for all the songwriting talent behind her on this album, I just can’t bring myself to call it. “good.“

Similar challenge to purity in music, pairing up with the Velvet Underground makes sense. Lack of range on these folk tunes makes it difficult to love.

nice

God I am tired of avant garde

teutonic ballads from the girl with the face of an angel and the voice of a man. OK - that's unfair. The songs are pretty enough with typical string guitar and flute arrangements, but she;s really trying to capture the fragile essence of her work with the Velvets and not quite getting there

music is love

I have no idea how to rate this album. It belongs to the small minority of records that leave me so puzzled that I can’t even tell whether I love them or hate them. After three songs, I thought it was absolutely awful and was ready to write a scathing review. Nico’s voice is painfully discordant ; she sounds like a tired old drunk singing alone in a deserted bar before closing time. I know she herself hated this album because of the instruments that were added to it... but to me, this is precisely the only thing that saves it, giving the music a strange, eerie, and sometimes very dark neo-medieval atmosphere that clashes with her lifeless delivery. As the songs went on, it kind of grew on me. I started to appreciate its weirdness – is it despite or because of Nico's horrible singing ? I truly don't know. Some movies are so bad that they are great ; maybe this is an example of an album that is so bad that it starts being interesting in its own way. In the end, I really don’t know what to make of it. I could give it a 1, a 2 or a 3, or even more, depending on my mood. I’ll settle on a 2 for now, but I’ll very likely come back to it later just to check my own reaction again. 4/10

With all the respect I have for her and her deep low voice, she wasn't pleased with the result and who am I to disagree?

Oboes and flutes, topped off with an absolutely awful voice. Nothing — and I mean absolutely nothing — from this album will stay with me. I’m just praying I’ll never have to hear Nico sing again outside of the Velvet Underground.

This started off being unremarkable and quickly went on to become insufferable.

Some lovely songs on this especially the opening couple but dwindled a bit in interest as it went on 3.5

it needed more spice... its like unseasoned the velvet underground. Great tracks there, but on the full length its a bit too flat... (2.75/5.0)

It didn't like this album too much.

I don’t really like Nico. A couple of excellent songs, but mostly meh.

There are times when I really wish I had the book, so I could understand why certain albums have been selected for this project. But, generally those times come when I am listening to an album that makes me so angry that I am determined to never give this author a single penny. This is one of those times.

The first two and It Was a Pleasure Then is worth your time. Rest is Seinfeld_shrug.gif

All it needs is a different singer and an entirely different set of songs. Fucking awful.

Tuneless. Boring. Pretentious. Dreadful.

Gotta be in the mood for this - it’s one-paced, so wears out its welcome quickly if you want something lively.

An especially pleasant listen. From the strong songwriting to the uniqueness of her German accent to the simplicity of the guitar with their accompanying violin melodies on top of them, this really finds a way to please the ears.

Man something about those songs the first two tracks made 7 min feel like 25. The lyrics for These Days were pretty good but the sounds almost lull you to sleep. The rest of the album was more of the same, I'll Keep it With Mine was alright. So slow, that voice that is almost detached most of the time, I guess was the theme

Christ was this album ever boring. I made it to track 4 (Winter Song) before writing it off and it didn't really get better from there. The next song, It Was a Pleasure Then, was one of my least favorites from this entire experience. 8 minutes of dull music interrupted by some of the most out-of-place and off-putting feedback that had me audibly groaning on my commute. Chelsea Girls had a decent hook but after 7 minutes of returning to the same hook over and over and over again I was ready to pull my hair out each time it came back around. Sorry Nico, I understand your artistic vision (I think), but this is just a total flop for me.

Okay this gets two stars only because the first couple of songs were decent but man it just kept getting worse. At one point I thought she was being paid to intentionally try weird voices? I don't understand this list sometimes

This is mostly nice and pleasant even if the voice is maybe a little unorthodox, the sparse arrangements work very well. Unfortunately it's not that interesting and that 8 min track in the middle is a skip.

2⭐️

Almost all songs sound like they would skip nicely into a Wes Anderson film. A great sound, loved her work with Velvet Underground. Apart from It Was A Pleasure Then, that needs some editing.

Just can't get past her out of tune singing. a painful listen.

Can she sing well? No. Well can she sing in time at least? Also no. But the arrangements are interesting and I appreciated the unconventional instrumentation. This sort of stuff is very cool to me.

Tråkigt emellanåt, men har absolut inga problem med Nicos sångröst.

Empieza muy bien pero se me ha desinflado al final. Está curioso.

I would have liked it more if she sang in a different, more appealing way.

Interesting voice but pretty distant sounding. A bit too slow and flat for me.

The vocals just drone on and not really in a good way.

Upvote for “These Days” as it is used perfectly during Margo’s return home in The Royal Tenenbaums. Downvote for not inolving the Velvet Underground.

Despite how much Spotify wants me to like These Days by always recommending it, this album kinda sucks.

These Days Chelsea Girls

First impression: wow, really don't care for her voice...this is likely going to be one of "those" albums. Really grating and off putting and made it hard to listen to this album. These Days, which based on play count I assume is the single off this album, isn't terrible, but I still don't love it. The rest of the songs are some weird medieval shit that I did not care for at all. How this album ended up on this list I do not know. DNF (2)

Fångas inte helt, även om delar är bra.

Visste inte att jackson browne skrivit these days. Hade heller aldrig gissat det. Skulle behövt en till lyssning här. Gillade de låtar jag kände igen, men tyckte dom andra va keffa

Denna har man ju lyssnat på ett par gånger under min tid som beroende av Velvet Underground. Otroligt att Jackson Browne enligt egen utsago var 16 när han skrev These days!

This review was written as I listened to the album, instead of after I finished. Sorry for the rambling. The Fairest of the Seasons: Why do the instruments and vocals sound out of time? It is quite off-putting. Also, what is up with her voice? Is it normally like that? The baroque strings are beautiful. A lot of the reviews are pretty negative, but I actually like this song. These Days: Okay, I think the strings are going to stick around. Yeah this one is pretty so far as well, I quite like it. Her voice is smooth and rich. I'm really enjoying this. Her vocals are different, but I actually love them. Little Sister: I hope the songs won't sound too similar because the strings and slow, melodic vocals are beautiful, but slightly formulaic. I think I'm enjoying this more and more as I listen. I was put off in the beginning because of all the negative reviews, but I can't really understand them. This is really nice! I love the different instruments in each ear, it is such a beautifully layered melody. I find her German accent really interesting, not grating at all. Winter Song: Ooh, this one is interesting with the flute. It definitely sounds frosty and wintery. I like the change in pace with the faster, plucky strings. I still have the separate sounds in each ear, which I love. I think I prefer the other songs slightly, though. It Was A Pleasure Then: Quiter, smaller sounds. I think this one might build up nicely. It sounds slightly disjointed though, maybe a bit eerie. The vocals are much louder than the instruments; I'm not sure why. Okay, maybe I don't like this one particularly. I don't like this one. No thank you. I loved the other ones so much, this one is so disappointing. It reminds me of a car garage, with random scraping and clanking. Oh my god, make it stop. I hate this one. Wow, I was wrong about this building up nicely. It sounds like something is being built, but definitely not a nice melody. La la la la la la la laaa. Chelsea Girls: Wow, this one is wonderful; I love it! It is so beautiful and layered. The flute and strings sound so good. I think it is my favourite so far. I just realised this song is 7 minutes long. I hope it stays like this. I'm glad it didn't get worse, I was worried. This one is so good. Absolute ear heaven compared to the last one. I'll Keep It With Mine: I also love this song! The mix of strings appeals to me greatly, I've never listened to music like this before. Somewhere There's A Feather: This album is so good. This track is so beautiful. Thinking about what my final rating might be, I reckon I will give it 4/5 I really, really like it, but that one song in the middle was just so bad. And also, some of the tracks are quite similar. Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams: Penultimate song! I haven't really mentioned lyrics so far, but I also really like them. I like the plucky pace of the instruments in this one. I prefer the other tracks, this one is a bit dull. Eulogy To Lenny Bruce: Final song! The vocals have an interesting effect, they are only in my left ear and sound slightly cave-like. No strings so far! I can't lie, I'm not a huge fan of this one. Where are my strings?? Overall: There were song really beautiful tracks that I loved. Then there were a couple dull ones, plus one that I hated. I can't give this 5 stars. Still, 4 stars is great. It was a very polarising album, because I either loved or hated the songs.

Indulged recording, she might have sounded better in German as the English voice is a shocker

Nomás por ser amiga de Andy pero ni tiene buena voz