The Velvet Underground & Nico is the debut album by American rock band the Velvet Underground, released in March 1967 by Verve Records. It was recorded in 1966 while the band were featured on Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable tour, which gained attention for its experimental performance sensibilities and controversial lyrical topics, including drug abuse, prostitution, sadomasochism and sexual deviancy. Many subgenres of rock music and forms of alternative music were significantly informed by the album, including art rock, punk, garage, shoegazing, goth, and indie. It sold poorly and was mostly ignored by contemporary critics, but later became regarded as one of the most influential albums in the history of popular music.

The Velvet Underground was one of music's most influential rock groups. Often referred to as the dark side of the psychedelic era, The Velvet Underground was rock's first great underground band. Its members consist of singer/guitarist Lou Reed, multi-instrumentalist John Cale, guitarist/bassist Sterling Morrison and percussionist Maureen Tucker. Their daring and politically-charged lyrics help shade music forever.

Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He was the guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of the Velvet Underground, and his solo career spanned five decades. Rolling Stone magazine voted Reed's 1989 "New York" album the 19th best of the 1980s. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time included two albums by Reed as a solo artist: "Transformer" and "Berlin". This Collection brings together remastered anthology of groundbreaking studio and live album titles written, recorded by Reed as a solo artist following the 1970 dissolution of the Velvet Underground.

The world of pop music was hardly ready for The Velvet Underground's first album when it appeared in the spring of 1967, but while "The Velvet Underground and Nico" sounded like an open challenge to conventional notions of what rock music could sound like (or what it could discuss), 1968's "White Light/White Heat" was a no-holds-barred frontal assault on cultural and aesthetic propriety.