Nico's album Chelsea Girls was released after her starring role in Warhol's film Chelsea Girls and after she finished her work with The Velvet Underground.
Nico's album does not focus on fashion or visual aesthetics, but is much more introspective than her
work with The Velvet Underground. In the titular track, Nico highlights several of the mysterious women that the Chelsea Hotel housed and were shown in the film Chelsea Girls. It would be easy to label these women based on their appearances, but Nico refuses to take the easy way out. She discusses one of the women being in an abusive relationship and another's drug abuse problems. By highlighting these issues, Nico makes these women seem like much more than pretty faces, but paints them as troubled women, many just doing their best to stay afloat in the turbulent world of New York.
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Other songs on Nico's album also focus on the inner self instead of how you look physically. For example, the song "Somewhere There's a Feather" talks about finding inner peace and listening to your inner voice. This message differs greatly from the views that Myles expresses in her version of Chelsea Girls, in which her outward clothing empowers her and helps give her a sense of identity. In The Velvet Underground and Nico, songs describe how outward appearances and images allow women to put on a persona they may not have had otherwise. However Nico's Chelsea Girls is all about listening to your heart and determining how you feel about things, not how society wants you to feel. It is about not letting your physical appearance define you.
Nico's Chelsea Girls
"Chelsea Girls"
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Here's Room 506
It's enough to make you sick
Bridget's all wrapped up in foil
You wonder if she can uncoil
Here they come now
See them run now
Here they come now
Chelsea Girls
Here's Room 115
Filled with S & M queens
Magic marker row
You wonder just high they go
Here they come now
See them run now
Here they come now
Chelsea Girls
Here's Pope dear Ondine
Rona's treated him so mean
She wants another scene
She wants to be a human being.
Here they come now
See them run now
Here they come now
Chelsea Girls
Pepper she's having fun
She thinks she's some man's son
Her perfect loves don't last
Her future died in someone's past
Here they come now
See them run now
Here they come now
Chelsea girls
Dear Ingrid's found her lick
She's turned another trick
Her treats and times revolve
She's got problems to be solved
Here they come now
See them run now
Here they come now
Chelsea Girls
Poor Mary, she's uptight
She can't turn out her light
She rolled Susan in a ball
And now she can't see her at all
Here they come now
See them run now
Here they come now
Chelsea Girls
Dropout, she's in a fix,
Amphetamine has made her sick
White powder in the air
She's got no bones and can't be scared
Here they come now
See them run now
Here they come now
Chelsea Girls
Here comes Johnny Bore,
He collapsed on the floor
They shot him up with milk
And when he died sold him for silk
Here they come now
See them run now
Here they come now
Chelsea Girls
Here they come now
See them run now
Here they come now
Chelsea girls
"Somewhere There's a Feather"
Love and learn
Take your turn
Somewhere there's a feather
Falling slowly from the sky
You need not know the reason why.
Stand apart
Hear your heart
Someday there will be
Another lover till the end
You need not hold your breath till then.
Don't ask me to explain to you
There's nothing to remain but what we see.
Fall and climb
Take your time
Somehow you must live up
To the precedents you've set
You need not hope for answers yet.
Don't ask me how I know it now
The future does not show itself to me.
So love and learn
Take your turn
Somewhere there's a feather
Falling slowly from the sky
You need not know the reason why.
