Violent Femmes is the debut album by Violent Femmes, the main recording of which took place in July 1982. The album was released by Slash Records on vinyl and cassette on April 13, 1983, and on CD in 1987 with two additional tracks, “Ugly” and “Gimme The Car”.

In 2002, Rhino Records remastered the album, adding an additional CD of demos and live performances of tracks as well as a radio interview with liner notes by American author, publisher and music critic Michael Azerrad, for the twentieth anniversary of the album’s release.

Violent Femmes is the band’s most successful album to date, having achieved the rare feat of going gold four years after its release and platinum four years later, without ever appearing on the Billboard 200 album chart. After being certified platinum on February 1, 1991, the album first entered the album chart on August 3, 1991. Since Nielsen Music began tracking sales electronically in 1991, the album has sold 1.8 million copies.

Slant Magazine ranked the album at No. 21 on its list of “Best Albums of the 1980s” and ranked it at No. 974 on its list of the 1,000 Greatest Albums in Music. It was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Most of the songs on the album and those that followed were written when songwriter Gordon Gano was 18 years old and still attending high school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Violent Femmes peaked at No. 171 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart in 1991.
The little girl on the cover was Billie Jo Campbell, a 3-year-old girl who, walking down a California street, approached her mother and offered her $100 for the photo that became the cover.

In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, J. D. Considine wrote that the Violent Femmes were precocious but dynamic, with a good balance between the immediacy of Gano’s lyrics and the full sound of the music. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice compared Gano and the album as a whole to Jonathan Richman of the Modern Lovers. Gano himself was tired of the comparisons with Richman and, by his own choice, was really trying to sound like Steve Wynn of Dream Syndicate.
In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Steve Huey characterizes Violent Femmes as one of the most distinctive, timeless, legendary and classic albums of the early alternative movement, noting that its music also owes something to the minimalism of the Modern Lovers, but is also embellished on the one hand by the sound of Brian Ritchie’s acoustic bass and on the other by the urgent and wild abandonment of punk rock, on the basis of which the Femmes forged a sound of their own. At the same time, he considered that Gano kept his music inspired and exciting, without displaying his seemingly deliberate childish naivety.
From this excellent album I select the track “Add It Up”.

Tracklist

1. Blister In The Sun 2:23
2. Kiss Off 2:53
3. Please Do Not Go 4:15
4. Add It Up 4:44
5. Confessions 5:27
6. Prove My Love 2:37
7. Promise 2:48
8. To The Kill 3:59
9. Gone Daddy Gone 3:03
10. Good Feeling 3:49