The Shaggs composed seemingly simple and bizarre songs using untuned guitars, erratic time signatures, disconnected rhythms, wandering melodies and rudimentary lyrics.

According to Rolling Stone, the sisters sang like "lobotomized Trapp Family Singers", while the musician Terry Adams compared their music to the free jazz compositions of Ornette Coleman.

Following a 1980 reissue on Rounder Records, 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] When Austin was young, his mother read his palm and made three predictions: he would marry a strawberry-blonde woman, he would have two sons after she had died, and his daughters would form a popular band.

"[3] One producer, Bobby Herne, recalled that the studio staff shut the control room doors and "rolled on the floor laughing" after they performed.

[4] The liner notes, written by Austin, said the Shaggs "loved" making music and described them as "real, pure, unaffected by outside influences".

[3] The new owner became convinced that the house was haunted by Austin's ghost and donated it to the Fremont fire department, who burnt it down in a firefighting exercise.

[3] It developed a cult following,[10] with fans including Frank Zappa, Bonnie Raitt, Jonathan Richman and Carla Bley.

[13] Reviewing the reissue for Rolling Stone, Debra Ray Cohen described Philosophy of the World as "the sickest, most stunningly awful wonderful record I've heard in ages".

He wrote that Philosophy of the World could stand with albums by the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks as "one of the landmarks of rock 'n' roll history".

[17] In 2004, Pitchfork observed that the Shaggs had been "embraced by the exact opposite audience Austin desired: the longhaired avant-garde intellectuals".

Pitchfork described it as "particularly disturbing" and unintentionally Oedipal, noting that Austin sings of catching another man, his son, "doin' it" with "his girl".

[22] Soon after it was published, the actor Tom Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner optioned Orlean's article for a film.

[23] As of 1999, Dot was working as a cleaner, Betty was a school janitor and a warehouse employee and Helen was living on disability benefits with severe depression.

[24] Reviewing the performance for The Village Voice, Eric Weisbard wrote that Dot seemed comfortable in front of the audience but that Betty appeared nervous.

[24] In 2001, the label Animal World released Better than the Beatles, a tribute album with covers of Shaggs songs by acts including Ida, Optiganally Yours, R. Stevie Moore, Deerhoof and Danielson Famille.

[26] The New York Times described it as "quirky but dreary" and "hamstrung by tonal uncertainty", with the girls' lack of talent made clear but the script hesitant to "turn their lives into a loopy joke".

[24] In 2017, Dot and Betty performed a reunion show at the Solid Sound Festival at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by the band Wilco.

[22] Their band comprised Krakow, Brittany Anjou and the drummer Laura Cromwell, who spent hours studying Helen's rhythms.

[22] According to the musician Howard Fishman, reporting on the 2017 show for The New Yorker, the Wiggin sisters did not seem at ease on stage and did not engage much with the audience.

[4] Their melodies, sung in unison, appear random;[18] Terry Adams of the band NRBQ compared them to the free jazz compositions of Ornette Coleman.

[15] The musician Howard Fishman wrote that Dot and Betty's vocals had a "sort of intuitive, spooky closeness" similar to sibling acts such as the Delmore Brothers and the Blue Sky Boys.

[22] The Rolling Stone critic Debra Ray Cohen wrote that they sang like "lobotomized Trapp Family Singers".

[7] The Vice writer Jennifer Park likened the lyrics to "dilapidated nursery rhymes, fables with overriding messages, and odd Christian songs".

[4] The Pitchfork critic Quinn Moreland found the songs intriguing and catchy, and said that the "chaos is negated in the same way that after enough contemplation the violent splatters of a Jackson Pollock painting become calming".

[3][9] The Pitchfork critic David Moore characterized their later material, released on the compilation Shaggs' Own Thing, as "amateurish bubblegum country".

[18] Moreland felt it was "playful and free of anxiety", and that the covers of songs by acts including the Carpenters were "faithful, even graceful".

[4] Alan McGee, the founder of Creation Records, wrote that they were "ground zero in the spurious world of outsider music" and "created possibilities" for unheard acts including Daniel Johnston and Wesley Willis.

[20] Reviewing the Shaggs' 1999 reunion for The Village Voice, Eric Weisbard wrote that they now seemed less unusual, likening their out-of-tune guitars to Sonic Youth and their "mixture of repression and cutesiness" to Shonen Knife.