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Kim Gordon is a woman of few words. But when those words hit \u2013 even in the form of a trivial packing list (\u201cHoodie, toothpaste, brush, foundation\u201d) \u2013 they can cause a cultural rupture.<\/p>\n
Two years ago, the then 70-year-old released Bye Bye, the lead single off her second solo album, The Collective, on which she listed the contents of her travel suitcase over a grinding trap beat. In a career filled with avant-garde excursions, it was Gordon\u2019s most outlandish. While indie heads smiled knowingly, the rest of the internet lost its collective mind.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The song went viral across social media, including in some unexpected corners. On hip-hop Reddit, commenters marvelled that \u201ca 70-year-old white lady is dropping some noise-rock rap that feels fresh, interesting, and isn\u2019t completely wack\u201d. On YouTube, music bros posted reaction videos<\/a> where they went berserk over the track\u2019s churning severity.<\/p>\n The song was embraced by a hip-hop crowd raised on the ear-sludging sounds of Playboi Carti<\/a>\u2019s Whole Lotta Red, and by a brain-rot generation who instantly connected with Gordon\u2019s aloof, absurd spirit.<\/p>\n Now 72, Gordon \u2013 Sonic Youth\u2019s bassist for 30 years from 1981 to 2011, until a sudden split from ex-husband Thurston Moore dissolved the project, a tumultuous experience she examined in her acclaimed memoir Girl in a Band \u2013 has a following of young people who weren\u2019t even aware of her past as the coolest person in indie-rock. Did she anticipate any of this?<\/p>\n \u201cNot really,\u201d Gordon says, typically understated. \u201cI mean, we knew it was kind of a banger, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n I imagine that before The Collective, Gordon had a certain understanding of who her audience was \u2013 most likely, Gen X-ers in Sonic Youth T-shirts. How much has that changed?<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot more young people, and lots of girls,\u201d says Gordon. \u201cBut mostly, I don\u2019t really like to look at the audience, or see them. It\u2019s distracting. It\u2019s kind of cool if you can just feel them in the dark. Being aware of the audience, that\u2019s kind of the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking from her home in Los Angeles \u2013 her background\u2019s blurred, but she\u2019s wearing a simple cream button-up, her hair tied back high \u2013 Gordon\u2019s just completed five lengthy interviews before mine, and now she\u2019s rushing to make it to a birthday dinner for her three-year-old goddaughter. If not eager, she\u2019s at least willing to discuss her new album Play Me, a spectacular continuation of the avant-rap dalliance she began on The Collective.<\/p>\n Tracks boom with stuttering dissonance and blown-out bass; dusty samples and guitar shards poke minor melodies through the debris. Gordon\u2019s vocals are a spirited instrument: on the title track, she hazily slurs the names of Spotify playlists (\u201cNeon Cowgirl \u2026 Villain Mode \u2026 Jazz in Background\u201d) to deride our culture of algorithmically defined convenience. On the thrumming Nail Biter, she\u2019s blurting ludicrous adlibs (\u201cSquash! Squash!\u201c) like she\u2019s Young Thug.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know anything about hip-hop,\u201d says Gordon. \u201cI mean, I know what I like and I always liked minimal rap. But my collaborator [producer Justin Raisen] likes to f— with that world. Justin does a lot of work with rappers, and that\u2019s his inspiration when working with me. In fact, the beat for Bye Bye, he made for Playboi Carti, but then he said, \u2018No, this is too out there for him, let\u2019s give it to Kim.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n For someone with noise in their musical DNA (just go revisit Expressway to Yr Skull), it makes sense that Gordon would be inspired by today\u2019s underground hip-hop, where dissonance is thriving via artists like Xaviersobased, OsamaSon and 2Slimey. The same thing happened to John Cale, architect of the Velvet Underground\u2019s droning white noise, who\u2019s now a hip-hop aficionado<\/a> at 84.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s interesting because Justin\u2019s worked on some of his songs, too. He\u2019s the one who brought John Cale in to work on that Charli XCX song<\/a> [from Wuthering Heights],\u201d says Gordon. \u201cBut usually in [hip-hop], the noise isn\u2019t guitar-originated, so that\u2019s the main difference between me and all that. Usually, when [rappers] want to do rock stuff, it\u2019s always kind of corny.\u201d<\/p>\n Gordon\u2019s not new to the world of hip-hop. Chuck D featured on Kool Thing, Gordon\u2019s infamous riposte to LL Cool J, after the pair became acquaintances in 1988 when Sonic Youth was making Daydream Nation at Manhattan\u2019s Greene St Recording studios at the exact time that Public Enemy was making It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back right next door.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Growing up in the \u201990s, I remember those worlds being quite separate, even heated arguments on the bus when, as a 10-year-old, I tried to convince my classmates that Geto Boys were better than Nirvana. It was an era where you had to pick a side: were you hip-hop or rock?<\/p>\n \u201cI have to say, the indie-rock world was pretty blind back then; they weren\u2019t that aware of hip-hop,\u201d says Gordon. \u201cBut we really only knew Public Enemy because we were working at the same studio. We didn\u2019t, like, have dinner,\u201d she laughs. \u201cI knew Mike D [of the Beastie Boys] since they were like 15 when they were a hardcore band, but they were kind of an exception.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Despite her pivot to ear-blaring beats, Gordon has never stopped playing guitar. Her textured, atonal squall is all over Play Me, including on the krautrock highlight Girl With a Look and the dreamy Not Today. She finds it interesting that \u2013 with the current breakout success of rock acts like Geese<\/a>, Turnstile<\/a> and Mk.gee, who even inspired Justin Bieber\u2019s Swag<\/a> \u2013 the instrument is making a comeback.<\/p>\n \u201cRock got pretty boring. Like, really boring. Like, dead,\u201d she says. \u201cBut people do seem to be receptive to guitar music again.\u201d<\/p>\n Why, after all these years, is dissonant guitar still her preferred mode of sonic expression? \u201cWell, I play with an open tuning, and I just never properly learned how to play any instrument, and it\u2019s just kind of good for improvising,\u201d says Gordon. \u201cElectricity is very influenced by movement, so it\u2019s a visceral thing, and I think that\u2019s always interesting to play with on stage, just moving around or in your relationship to your amp.\u201c<\/p>\n For Play Me, Gordon re-recorded Bye Bye as a political anthem. It was another idea her producer Raisen borrowed from the hip-hop world, where remixes are common. While searching for a concept that\u2019d match the original track\u2019s viral list format, Gordon saw a news report noting the words Donald Trump had started banning from government platforms.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one of those things where it\u2019s like, \u2018Really, did that happen?\u2019 But, you know, it really did,\u201d says Gordon. The song finds her absurdly reciting \u201cbanned\u201d terms like \u201cclimate change\u201d, \u201cHispanic\u201d, \u201ctransgender\u201d and \u201cmeasles\u201d. \u201cI just thought it was funny,\u201d says Gordon. \u201cI didn\u2019t really set out to make it a political song, but that\u2019s the way it ended up.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Kim](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/568ba5a930acaa85ff91c6d54163ea62e325b8c7.jpeg\")
Kim Gordon with Sonic Youth bandmates, from left, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley in Amsterdam in 1986.Redferns<\/p>\n
![\"Nate](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/78c0875b0b5f408068edb2f13908ec9b791ed6bd.jpeg\")
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