![]() He wouldn’t record it himself until years later, but in 1967 its world-weariness was surely better suited to Nico, 10 years his senior and far more experienced. ![]() It also included “These Days,” by one of her many suitors and occasional accompanist Jackson Browne, still in his teens at the time. Nico’s first album was almost entirely written by others, including her VU bandmates. And the gloriously doomy decadence of “All Tomorrow’s Parties” still feels inseparable from her cool Teutonic croon.Ĭlick to load video Cover Songs (These Days, I’ll Keep It With Mine, The End) With a delivery suggesting she suffers no fools, the husky-toned singer seems to personify the intimidating character she describes in “Femme Fatale.” If “I’ll Be Your Mirror had been sung in Reed’s comparatively youthful-sounding tones at the time, the dewy ballad might have had considerably less gravitas than it’s given by Nico’s cello-pitched pipes. As reluctant as Lou Reed had been to cede lead vocal duties to Nico on the three tracks she steers, time has proven she was the perfect fit. But it’s impossible to argue with the recorded results, which are limited to the group’s timeless debut, The Velvet Underground & Nico. When Warhol foisted Nico on The Velvet Underground as their chanteuse-in-residence, the band initially bristled. The Velvet Underground (Femme Fatale, I’ll Be Your Mirror, All Tomorrow’s Parties) Listen to the best Nico songs on Apple Music and Spotify. Instead of narrowing it down to a single spot, here are 20 of the best Nico songs that traverse the entire spectrum of the German iconoclast’s unflagging assault on artistic complacency. ![]() It’s challenging to pinpoint the ideal entry point into the Nico catalog, a body of work as complex as it is commanding. But her career was cut tragically short when a 1988 accident brought her troubled life to an untimely conclusion. From the autumnal baroque-pop of her 1967 solo debut, Chelsea Girl, to the artful abstraction of the John Cale-produced The Marble Index and beyond, Nico hammered out a haunting, hypnotic string of cult classics. A whole slew of subversive subgenres including post-punk and goth are indebted to her. With her androgynous vocal style and her scorched-earth policy towards traditional song structure, Nico was “No Wave” years before the term was coined. He masterminded the short-lived but legendary partnership between Nico and his avant-rock charges The Velvet Underground, but she went on to an uncompromising solo career that broke even more rules than the VU’s convention-shattering dispatches from beyond rock’s outer limits. Born Christa Paffgen in Cologne, Germany, she was a film actor, recording artist, and successful model before she ever emigrated to the US and came into the orbit of Andy Warhol. Who could make Lou Reed seem like Brian Wilson, turn the pump organ into a rock instrument, and bring The Doors’ darkest visions to an even more apocalyptic place? Nobody but Nico.
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