An Animation of The Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” … for Your Sunday Morning

50 years ago, The Vel­vet Under­ground released their first album The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico. And while the album nev­er topped the charts, its influ­ence you can’t deny. In a 1982 inter­view with Musi­cian Mag­a­zine, Bri­an Eno famous­ly said:

I was talk­ing to Lou Reed the oth­er day and he said that the first Vel­vet Under­ground record sold 30,000 copies in the first five years. The sales have picked up in the past few years, but I mean, that record was such an impor­tant record for so many peo­ple. I think every­one who bought one of those 30,000 copies start­ed a band! So I con­sole myself think­ing that some things gen­er­ate their rewards in a sec­ond-hand way.

“Sun­day Morn­ing” was the last song VU record­ed for that album–a last ditch attempt to write a hit. Accord­ing to Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, the band’s patron, sug­gest­ed the theme for the song: “Andy said, ‘Why don’t you just make it a song about para­noia?’ I thought that was great so I came up with ‘Watch out, the world’s behind you, there’s always some­one watch­ing you,’ which I feel is the ulti­mate para­noid state­ment in that the world cares enough to watch you.” Writes Joe Har­vard, in his short book on the album, the song “calls to mind a sleepy, qui­et Sun­day so per­fect­ly that you can lis­ten to the song repeat­ed­ly before reg­is­ter­ing what it’s real­ly about: para­noia and dis­place­ment.”

Above, you watch a new ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed to com­mem­o­rate the 50th anniver­sary of The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico. Cre­at­ed by James Eads and Chris McDaniel, it’ll hope­ful­ly get your Sun­day under­way.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

The Vel­vet Under­ground & Andy Warhol Stage Pro­to-Punk Per­for­mance Art: Dis­cov­er the Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable (1966)

Hear Lost Acetate Ver­sions of Songs from The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)