A decade after its release, "The Velvet Underground & Nico" began to attract wide praise from rock critics. Christgau wrote in his 1977 retrospective review for "The Village Voice" that the record had been difficult to understand in 1967, "which is probably why people are still learning from it. It sounds intermittently crude, thin, and pretentious at first, but it never stops getting better." He later included it in his "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings, published in "" (1981). In 1982, musician Brian Eno stated that while the album initially only sold approximately 30,000 copies, "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band."