Primary singer Lou Reed delivers explicit lyrics spanning themes of drug abuse, prostitution, sadomasochism and urban life.

At the instigation of their mentor and manager Andy Warhol, and his collaborator Paul Morrissey, German singer Nico was also featured; she had occasionally performed lead vocals for the band.

[20] With the backing of a label, one month later in May 1966 three of the songs, "I'm Waiting for the Man", "Venus in Furs" and "Heroin", were re-recorded in two days at TTG Studios during a stay in Hollywood.

[18][23] Norman Dolph and John Licata are sometimes attributed to producing the Scepter Studios sessions, as they were responsible for recording and engineering, though neither is credited.

[22] Reed claimed it was MGM who decided to bring in Wilson, and credited him for producing songs such as "Sunday Morning": "Andy absorbed all the flak.

"[26]The Velvet Underground & Nico was notable for its overt descriptions of topics such as drug abuse, prostitution, sadism and masochism and sexual deviancy.

"I'm Waiting for the Man" describes a protagonist's efforts to obtain heroin,[27][28] while "Venus in Furs" is a nearly literal interpretation of the 19th century novel of the same name (which itself prominently features accounts of BDSM).

Reed, a fan of poets and authors such as Raymond Chandler, Nelson Algren, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Hubert Selby, Jr., saw no reason the content in their works could not translate well to rock and roll music.

He was influenced greatly by his work with minimalist composer La Monte Young, John Cage and the early Fluxus movement, and encouraged the use of alternative ways of producing sound in music.

[31] Cale's technique usually involved minimalist drones, detuning for an eerie, surreal effect, and distortion to highlight harmonics and transform the instrument's sound.

[41] The band's initial percussionist and ex-member, Angus MacLise, had informed Tucker's style and influenced her into playing "pounding" rhythms that fit with, in her words, "the ominous mood" of several of the album's songs.

[42] When the album was first issued, the main back cover photo (taken at a performance of Warhol's event Exploding Plastic Inevitable) contained an image of actor Eric Emerson projected upside-down on the wall behind the band.

[18] Rather than complying, MGM recalled copies of the album and halted its distribution until Emerson's image could be airbrushed from the photo on subsequent pressings.

[43] In January 2012, the "Velvet Underground" business partnership (of which John Cale and Lou Reed were general partners) sued the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York after the Foundation licensed the cover's banana design to Incase Designs for use on a line of iPhone and iPad cases.

[49][50][51] Grant McPhee, a filmmaker and music writer, later conducted a 2021 investigation into Eno's famous claim and concluded that it may have sold as many as 200,000 copies by 1971 alone.

[52] A capsule review from Billboard published ahead of the album's release praised the "haunting" vocals of Nico and the "powerful" lyrics of the band, calling it a collection of "sophisticated folk-rock" and a "left-fielder which could click in a big way.

However he ultimately wrote that "the Velvets are an important group and this album has some major work [within]", singling out "I'm Waiting for the Man", "Venus in Furs", "Femme Fatale", and "Heroin".

[57] The Tampa Tribune writer Vance Johnston dismissed it as a collection of "several confusing sounds ... most depressing and whatever the message I failed to get" but wrote that Warhol aficionados would declare it his best "at any rate".

[58] Don Lass of New Jersey's Asbury Park Evening Press was similarly dismissive, finding the music "as lifeless and inanimate as the discarded banana peel, touching every cliche in the rock 'n' roll spectrum while missing the genuine fun that good big-beat renderings can offer.

[60] John F. Szwed of Jazz & Pop called the band's performance on the record "tedious despite their ventures into electric viola et al", acknowledging the strength of their "loud whine" but ultimately writing that "something is lost in the translation" in the absence of the visual accompaniments of Exploding Plastic Inevitable.

[71] In The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (1998), Colin Larkin called it a "powerful collection" that "introduced Reed's decidedly urban infatuations, a fascination for street culture and amorality bordering on voyeurism.

In 1997, The Velvet Underground & Nico was named the 22nd greatest album of all time in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted in the United Kingdom by HMV Group, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM.

The exact release date is unknown, so it remains open for debate whether Electric Banana or The Riats were the first to put a Velvet Underground cover on record.

Musicians involved in the recording include Beck plus Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker, Brian LeBarton, Bram Inscore, Yo, Giovanni Ribisi, Chris Holmes, and Þórunn Magnúsdóttir.

[97] The subsequent 1996 remastered CD reissue removed these changes, keeping the original album art and double-tracked mix of "All Tomorrow's Parties" found on the LP.

The album was featured on the second disc of the set along with the single version of "All Tomorrow's Parties", two Nico tracks from Chelsea Girl and a ten-minute excerpt of the 45-minute "Melody Laughter" performance.

In 2002, Universal released a two-disc "Deluxe Edition" set containing the stereo version of the album along with the five tracks from Nico's Chelsea Girl written by members of the band on disc one, and the mono version of the album along with the mono single mixes of "All Tomorrow's Parties" and "Sunday Morning" and their B-sides "I'll Be Your Mirror" and "Femme Fatale" on disc two.

According to the essay by music critic and historian Richie Unterberger contained within the set, the source for the show is the only audio tape of acceptable quality recording during singer Nico's tenure in the band.

The essay also clarifies that the absence of any DVD materials in the box set is due to the fact that none of the band's shows were filmed, in spite of their heavy reliance on multimedia visuals.

It resurfaced decades later when it was bought by collector Warren Hill of Montreal, Quebec, Canada in September 2002 at a flea market in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City for $0.75.