New York Dolls has since been often cited as one of the greatest debut albums in rock music, one of the genre's most popular cult records, and a foundational work for the late 1970s punk rock movement [REF].
In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Erlewine-the website's senior editor-claimed that New York Dolls was a more quintessential proto-punk album than any of the Stooges' releases because of how it "plunders history while celebrating it, creating a sleazy urban mythology along the way".