Philosophy of the World features bizarre songs with badly tuned guitars, erratically shifting time signatures, disconnected drum parts, wandering melodies and rudimentary lyrics about pets and families.

Over the decades, Philosophy of the World circulated among musicians and attracted fans including NRBQ, Frank Zappa and Kurt Cobain.

After it was reissued on Rounder Records in 1980, it received enthusiastic reviews for its uniqueness in Rolling Stone and The Village Voice.

The Shaggs were formed in 1965 by the teenage sisters Dorothy ("Dot"), Betty and Helen Wiggin in the small town of Fremont, New Hampshire.

"[3] One producer, Bobby Herne, recalled: "We shut the control room doors and rolled on the floor laughing.

"[5] Shortly afterwards, Herne and another Fleetwood employee, Charlie Dreyer, bought the Third World recording studio in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

[5] He wrote the album's liner notes, which said the Shaggs "loved" making music and described them as "real, pure, unaffected by outside influences".

[5] The journalist Irwin Chusid argued that it was unlikely Dreyer had stolen the records, as they were valueless at the time; many copies may have simply been disposed of.

"[8] Adams and Ardolino curated a new release, the 1982 compilation Shaggs' Own Thing, comprising unreleased recordings made between 1969 and 1975.

[3] Despite the increasing interest in outsider music and airplay on college radio stations, the reissue sold poorly.

[3] "Philosophy of the World is the sickest, most stunningly awful wonderful record I've heard in ages: the perfect mental purgative for doldrums of any kind," wrote Debra Rae Cohen for Rolling Stone in a review of the 1980 reissue.

"Like a lobotomized Trapp Family Singers, the Shaggs warble earnest greeting-card lyrics (...) in happy, hapless quasi-unison along ostensible lines of melody while strumming their tinny guitars like someone worrying a zipper.

"[20] "Without exaggeration," Chris Connelly wrote in a later Rolling Stone article, "it may stand as the worst album ever recorded.

[22] Due to its sloppy playing and mostly nonsensical lyrics, the album became a favorite among collectors and has been called "proto-punk" by some critics.