The resulting music on the album – a mix of carefree rock and roll, influences from Brill Building pop, and campy sensibilities – explores themes of urban youth, teen alienation, adolescent romance, and authenticity, as rendered in Johansen's colloquial and ambiguous lyrics.

The band proved difficult to market outside their native New York and developed a reputation for rock-star excesses while touring the United States in support of the album.

He and Murcia originally planned to work in the clothing business and opened a boutique on Lexington Avenue that was across the street from a toy repair shop called the New York Doll Hospital, which gave them the idea for their name.

[5] They enlisted Jerry Nolan as his replacement, while managers Marty Thau, Steve Leber, and David Krebs still struggled to find the band a record deal.

"[4] Their performance at the Mercer Arts Center was attended by journalist and Mercury Records publicity director Bud Scoppa, and Paul Nelson, an A&R executive for the label.

[6] At the band's first board meeting in Chicago, Johansen fell asleep in Mercury's conference room while record executives discussed potential producers.

[4] Known for having refined pop tastes and technologically savvy productions, Rundgren had become increasingly interested in progressive rock sounds by the time he was enlisted to produce the New York Dolls' debut album.

He later said that expectations for the band and the festive atmosphere of the recording sessions proved to be more of a problem: "The Dolls were critics' darlings and the press had kind of adopted them.

[15] With a short amount of studio time and no concept in mind for the album, the band chose which songs to record based on how well they had been received at their live shows.

[18] Sylvain recalled Rundgren inviting Buell and their Chihuahua to the studio and putting the latter atop an expensive mixing console, while Johansen acknowledged that his recollections of the sessions have since been distorted by what he has read about them: "It was like the 1920s, with palm tree décor and stuff.

[19] Because the Dolls had little money, Sylvain and Thunders played the austerely designed and affordable Gibson Les Paul Junior guitars on the record.

[24] In the opinion of critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, the album's rowdy hard rock songs also revamp riffs from Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones, resulting in music that sounds edgy and threatening in spite of the New York Dolls' wittingly kitsch and camp sensibilities.

[25] "Personality Crisis" features raunchy dual guitars, boogie-woogie piano, and a histrionic pause, while "Trash" is a punky pop rock song with brassy singing.

[28] "Private World", an escapist plea for stability, was co-written by Kane, who rarely contributed as a songwriter and felt overwhelmed as a young adult in the music business.

"[30] In interpreting the song's titular monster, Frank Kogan writes that it serves as a personification for New York and its ethos, while Johansen asking listeners if they "could make it with Frankenstein" involves more than sexual slang: Frankenstein wasn't just a creature to have sex with, he represented the whole funky New Yorkiness of New York, the ostentation and the terror, the dreams and the fear ... David was asking if you – if I – could make it with the monster of life, whether I could embrace life in all its pain and dreams and disaster.

[32] In Christgau's opinion, Johansen's colloquial and morally superior lyrics are imbued with humor and a sense of human limits in songs whose fundamental theme is authenticity.

[34] According to journalist Steve Taylor, "Vietnamese Baby" deals with the impact of the Vietnam War at the time on everyday activities for people, whose fun is undermined by thoughts of collective guilt.

[44] Music journalist Phil Strongman said its commercial failure could be attributed to the New York Dolls' divisive effect on listeners, including writers from the same magazine.

[45] In a feature story on the band for Melody Maker prior to the album, Mark Plummer had dismissed their playing as the poorest he had ever seen, while the magazine's reporter Michael Watts viewed them as an encouraging albeit momentary presence in what he felt was a lifeless rock and roll scene at the time.

[48] During their appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test in the UK, the show's host Bob Harris dismissed their music as "mock rock" in his on-air comments.

[49] They also developed a reputation for rock-star excesses, including drugs, groupies, trashed hotel rooms, and public disturbances, and according to Ben Edmonds of Creem, became "the most walked-out-on band in the history of show business".

[50] Strongman wrote that the band and the album were difficult to market because of their kitschy style and how Murcia's death had exacerbated their association with hard drugs, which "wasn't altogether true in the early days".

[51] They remained the most popular band in New York City, where their Halloween night concert at the Waldorf Astoria in 1973 drew hundreds of young fans and local television coverage.

[54] Trouser Press founder and editor Ira Robbins viewed New York Dolls as an innovative record, brilliantly chaotic, and well produced by Rundgren.

[54] Ellen Willis, writing for The New Yorker, said it is by far 1973's most compelling hard rock album and that at least half of its songs are immediate classics, particularly "Personality Crisis" and "Trash", which she called "transcendent".

[55] In Newsday, Christgau hailed the New York Dolls as "the best hard rock band in the country and maybe the world right now", writing that their "special genius" is combining the shrewd songwriting savvy of early-1960s pop with the anarchic sound of late-1960s heavy metal.

"[54] It was English singer Morrissey's favorite album, and according to Paul Myers, the record "struck such a chord with [him] that he was not only moved to form his own influential group, The Smiths ... but would eventually convince the surviving Dolls to reunite [in 2004]".

[73] Writing for AllMusic, Erlewine – the website's senior editor – claims that New York Dolls is a more quintessential proto-punk album than any of the Stooges' releases because of how it "plunders history while celebrating it, creating a sleazy urban mythology along the way".

[70] In The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Joe Gross calls it an "absolutely essential" record and "epic sleaze, the sound of five young men shaping the big city in their own scuzzy image".

In 1978, it was voted 199th in Paul Gambaccini's book Rock Critics' Choice: The Top 200 Albums, which polled a number of leading music journalists and record collectors.