One Song - Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing"

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

What happens when Kim Gordon and L.L. Cool meet for an interview 1989? You get this week’s song, Sonic Youth’s 1990 major label debut single “Kool Thing.” Join Diallo and LUXXURY as they unpack where the interview went awry, debate the song’s subtle (or not so subtle) L.L. references, and untangle the layers and layers of Sonic Youth’s trademark guitar noise. One Song Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/40SIOpVROmrxTjOtH7Q1yw?si=fe485f0104594825 Songs Discussed: "Kool Thing" - Sonic Youth "BYE BYE" - Kim Gordon "Bull in the Heather" - Sonic Youth "Cheree" - Suicide "You Got Me" - Theoretical Girls "Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses" - Glenn Branca "Teenage Riot" - Sonic Youth "Rock the Bells" L.L. Cool J "I Can't Live Without My Radio" - L.L. Cool J "Into the Groovey" - Ciccone Youth "Going Back to Cali" - L.L. Cool J "I Against I" - Bad Brains "In the Air Tonight" - Phil Collins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So luxury, are you ready to get noisy with today's episode? Hell yeah, Diallo. We're going to dive into a highly influential experimental noise rock band today, a group that I'm dubbing the Velvet Underground of Indy Rock. Very much like the Velvets, they were underground music gods, influencing hundreds of bands like Nirvana, the Yay, Yeah, Yeah, is my bloody Valentine during their 30-year career. But they never quite reached the same level of success as a lot of their accolites.

Today, we're talking about a song from their major label debut album, Goo. And look, in the one song Canada of huge hit songs, this is an underground classic, more than a mainstream number one with a bullet classic. But it is a highly influential song and we want to talk about it. Is it a feminist anthem? A disc track or just a song about an interview gone wrong? I don't think so. We're talking about one song and that song is Cool Thing by Sonic Youth. This episode is brought to you by FedEx.

These days, the power move isn't having a big material. metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate launch. The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ Diallo-Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ songwriter, and musicologist luxury, aka the guy who whispers, Interpolation.

And this is one song. The show where we break down the sams and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more listen. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before. And also, if you want to watch one song, and you might already be doing that. But if you're not, you can watch this full episode on YouTube and on Spotify. And while you're there, please like and subscribe. All right, so luxury.

I know Sonic Youth is an important band for a lot of people. So tell me, what did this band mean to you during their heyday? So Sonic Youth is one of these bands Maybe like Velvet Underground, like I mentioned that, like more people have heard of than heard. Maybe more people have are aware of their influence or seen the T-shirts that have listened to.

They are like very simply put an avant-garde, punk rock, post-punk, noise rock, experimental band that had this record with this song on it that sort of signals the end of an era, I would say, for alternative rock. This is the age... This is the end. This is the end

of what... 1990 is sort of a bookmark on an era of a certain type of pre-Indy Rock, Alt Rock. We'll be getting into it in detail a little bit later. But this is when Underground really meant Underground was really coming from a background of like almost You got to find it in the record store. It's not going to be on the radio. It's not going to be on the radio. It's going to be more in the indie record shops.

It's going to be things that cool kids know about. And we're going to talk about, quote, what is a cool kid? What does it mean to be cool? But certainly they weren't necessarily. There's a rap group from the 20 teens. but I think it has multiple definitions. Listen, in 1991, a lot of bands in their orbit, you might start hearing, you know,

your grandma or your aunt or somebody might be aware of, like Nirvana, some of the bands we named. But Sonic Youth has always remained a little bit under the radar. We wanted to give them their flowers. This song is the closest thing they ever got to breaking out of the underground. Yeah. It's a great song on its own. And one more thing I want to say is it's a very personal song,

very personal band for me. And I would say a lot of people for whom this band, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon were this couple that made music together and they were kind of like everybody in the indie underground's older brother and sister and that there's a feeling that I think

is shared among a lot of people when they broke up and we won't get too deep into the drama there but their dramatic breakup had a lot of people picking sides one more reason why I chose this song over another it was neck and neck with and we'll talk about that song in a minute is that it is a Kim Gordon

vocal I am team Kim and we're going to talk a lot about Kim Gordon on this episode. Where were you the first time you heard Sonic Youth? Well, I got this record when I was the head of WGTB in Georgetown. I was the music director. Is that a college station? That was our college station and I got all this free music and I still have to this day the promo version of this song as well as the full length record. DGC which was Geffen's like subsidiary kind of indie subsidiary was pushing it hard. They had a budget it. And it was crazy coming from, again, a bit of a punk rock indie background. I almost have to apologize with saying that it feels a little bit cringe. We're going to talk about that too.

What this cringe feeling is that they too were feeling, we were like, oh my God, Sonic Youth is on a major label. We're getting their promo copy alongside the promo copy from, you know, Bon Jovi and Megadeth or whatever it was. It was definitely the change, the end of one era and the beginning of another. Oh my God. And speaking of eras, Kim Gordon still making cool, interesting. music came out on an album last year. She's in her like trap experimental noise era now. She's 70 years old. She made a record called The Collective that came out last year and was nominated for two Grammys. I like the fact that one of her collaborators makes a song. He has Playboy Cardi and mine. Yeah, Justin Reisen. Yeah. And then they decide, oh, this is a little too weird.

What if Kim hops on it? And then she makes an absolute, this song. It's a banger. I only heard it this week. I wish I had heard it last year. This is bye bye by Kim Gordon in 2024. I love that beat. Brush. Foundation. Contact solution. Lip mask by mask. I love that song.

So good, right? Let me just ask you around at the gate. How much Sonic Youth did you know before this week? Dude, I'm not going to lie to you or the listeners for once. I did not know Sonic Youth. I obviously knew the name. I'm around way too many music people to not know the name of the band. And even the genre of the band.

I knew that it was, you know, however you put it, experimental noise, indie rock. It's not a genre with one or two, even three words. It's got a lot of words associated with it. But I'll be honest, Sonic Youth was never a band I got into. It wasn't even that I disliked them. That's not it. I just never listened to them. I always saw their poster when I would go, you know, walk into the record store.

It was always them and the cramps. The cramps are another group that I know almost next to nothing about. But if you walk into a record store, you would always see Sonic Youth and you'd always see the cramps. Another one of my favorite band. I know. Definitely be doing a Graham's episode, but I'll give us a little time before we do that one. But I will say this. I do know one Sonic Youth song. And one Sonic Youth song did make it into my set in my DJ days.

And that is Bull and the Heather, which I really like. I'm so glad you mentioned that one too. That is a great song. It connects to a lot of themes we're going to talk about today. Kathleen Hannah from Bikini Kill and La Tigra is in the video. There's a lineage of feminist punk rock that is happening right there in this video. in that moment, sort of passing the torch from one era to the next.

You just hear you mentioned bikini kills and Latigra. It's like when you have a friend on Instagram or like you hear of somebody's existence and you guys have 30 mutual friends and like you have all this. And like you're just like, but wait, that's me and Sonic Youth. I'm just like how did I not know you

and I knew everybody you influence? I know everybody you're hanging out with you know at Fred 62 at 2 a.m. That is such a fascinating question to me and I completely agree with you that that is such a phenomenon. This is a maybe name that more people know that they know their music. I think that's a pretty common phenomenon. Even though the songs are catchy. They've got catchy songs. I don't know who at Geffen fucked up the marketing, but there's no reason why more of us don't know

Sonic Youth. That is so interesting because I know you love all the bands that Sonic Youth influence. I mean, Nirvana being just a perfect example. Nirvana, and that's kind of why I said there's this sort of end of one era when the song comes out in 1990. Yeah. And then 1991, a new era begins. And in 1990 before, Nevermind came out, Nirvana opened for Sonic Youth. Oh, wow. And that happened again in 1991 on a European tour, which ended up, they filmed and it becomes this movie called 1991, the year that punk broke. It's actually a Sonic Youth, like, documentary.

But it shows you how as they're on tour together, Nirvana starts to exceed Sonic Youth globally. Yeah. And it's all happening in this moment, which is why they... All sort of in real time. In real time, that's why they have the sort of tongue-in-cheek title of the documentary as the year that punk broke. Punk broke. So much of what's happening with all of these bands.

There's a little bit of a sardonic tongue in cheek. It's also the 90s. So punk broke is like classic ironic. Totally. The irony is all about irony. And these bands both have to deal with success happening for Nirvana on the one hand. Not quite for Sonic Youth on the other hand. So they're dealing with all of these sort of indie rock, punk rock ethos and attitudes about popularity,

which they had assumed would never happen to any of them. And therefore it was uncool. and suddenly they have to like rework their thinking about what does it mean to be popular and successful? It's so interesting. It feels like the 90s was like the last great time to be an artist and get really well compensated for being an artist.

Right. That's a larger issue. You know, like when I started researching this episode, I didn't realize by the time Sonic Youth signed to Geffen in 1990, they had already been a band for nine years. Timing means everything. I just fundamentally believe that.

They paid their dues big time. They had done the indie thing for so long. Touring in vans all over Europe, like $50 a gig, you know, kind of stuff here and they're sleeping on floors. They were rising gradually through the ranks, exactly. And so 1990, the Geffen thing is like kind of a new layer for them, new level for them. Yeah, and they had six albums under their belt. Yeah, they already had six albums under their belt. They'd already made a name for themselves in what was sort of becoming known as the alternative music scene,

which was global, but still kind of small and not a lot of money and a lot of touring and work. But they do come out of what was originally a New York underground scene. And I want to just back up for a second and sort of set the stage for where Sonic Youth comes from, where their sound comes from, and when their ideology comes from. I'd love to do. Let's back up really briefly to the 60s and kind of the birth of this minimalist music movement, which is an artistic movement. You may have heard some names like Steve Reich and Terry Riley and Philip Glass and Lamont Young. What they were doing was they're coming from an artistic tradition and using sound in new ways. So it was use of drones and dissonance and.

repetition in Philip Glass's case, and they're playing with volume and space and time. No way, dissonance on a disc track? There's dissonance on this disc track. Maybe it's a dissatisfaction because it has dissonance. Maybe it's necessary to have dissonance to make it a proper distract. A lot of this is happening in New York. A lot of it is happening in downtown New York. We've had many episodes where we've talked about how New York City is a place where you have the art world and the music world and fashion all colliding. And so this is a perfect example of that because this is happening in parallel, but also connected to punk rock. So in the late 70s, you've got this minimalist art rock thing happening. You've got punk rock happening.

And there's this third thing called No Wave. So let's talk a little bit about our unsung hero, a gentleman called Glenn Bronca. So Glenn Branca, really briefly, in 1976, he's got an experimental theater background, but he moves to New York in 1976. He hears suicide, right? One of our favorite Yeah, absolutely. It changes his life. He hears, like so many people that have punk rock epiphanies, he had one. He forms a band called Theoretical Girls. This is his 1978 song, You Got Me.

I mean, you're a fan. I like that. Yeah, I do. I love that you like that. I like it, too. I'm surprised somebody hasn't used that yet. So he's doing the band thing. He's on the punk rock scene.

In this moment, there's punk rock and there's no wave and there's experimental. They all kind of cross-pollinate. If you're downtown in New York, you might be. in a band that's in several of the scenes. And maybe you go to an art gallery and you hear something. And then later that night you practice with your band and you bring something to it that you got from that scene. There's a great quote from Peter Gordon who talks about, you know, sometimes you're

in the rehearsal space and you're going thump, thump, thump, thump. And then maybe the next day you go see some of this experimental music and you hear hmm. And then that night you go back to the rehearsal space and the hmm starts to merge with a thump, thump, thump, thump. I thought that was a great way of expressing how these worlds are colliding and these sounds are starting to collide. Sure.

So specifically going back to unsung hero, Glenn Branca, he has this epiphany and starts to develop ideas that are not band-based. So he becomes a conductor of these guitar symphonies where he has like a dozen guitar players playing kind of what you heard, like atonal, dissonant, repetitive, non-melodic drones mixed with the atonalism, mixed with weird tunings. And he calls them symphonies. And he's sort of making an announcement. He's saying like this type of music is also music.

This type of sound, I should say. This type of sound, I should say, is also music. I love it. So it's a big sort of art discussion happening around. Eternal, doesn't it? Non-melody. Exactly. So Thurston and Lee, by the way, have this connection to Glenn Branca.

They were sometimes amongst the 10 to 12 guitar players participating in this borderline cacophony of a symphony. Here is indeterminate activity of resultant masses. That's the name of the track. From 1981, 10 guitars including Glenn Branca, Lee Renato and Thurston Moore. And I won't make the fragment too long in case we lose listeners.

It's like, no, stay tuned. There's melody coming up. It's going to get great. So how does Sonic Youth fit into this scene? Sonic Youth evolves out of a number of bands and projects that Thurston Moore, the key subjects that begin the band are Thurston Moore and his girlfriend, Kim Gordon.

Or Kim Gordon and her boyfriend Thurston Moore, I should say. And it should be said that Kim Gordon has an art background. She's from L.A. she went to Santa Monica College and the Otis College of Art and Design. Her autobiography, girl and band is so good. I would highly recommend it. And the first half of it is her talking about and name-dropping all these art world people.

Her life is about the art almost front and center. In fact, to this day, she says frequently, she doesn't call herself a musician. A lot of her projects involve music. But at her core, she's an artist. So she's buddies with Richard Prince and Cindy Sherman and Basquiat. So, like, all of these people are in her world and in her circle. So they formed this band called Sonic Youth in 1981. Kim says as soon as Thurson came up with that name, a certain sound that was more of what we wanted to do came about.

Like in the name, which is like, in my opinion, the greatest band name of all time. Really? It just says it's so cool. I almost disagree. I think one of the reasons why I might have taken forever until this week to listen to Sonic Youth was the name scared me off. I've always felt like groups with certain words in their name, like soul, the word souls in your group, sound. Oh, sure. Funkey.

Sound. Oh, Funky's a non-starter, unfortunately. Absolutely agree. Hard agree. I don't even know if I can listen to it. Funky Kingston's a great song. But listen, seriously, Sonic Youth, the word Sonic, I think, might have scared me off a little bit. It felt too on the nose. That's so funny to me. I totally get it. When you put it that way, I totally get it. To my ears, I guess out of just, you know, use over time, you get used to it. But I had Sonic Youth posters. I had Sonic Youth, like, more than I listened to the music, I was absorbed in the name. and the imagery. It just felt cool to me. It just absorbed the coolness right there in those two

words. And clearly all their fans were right. I was wrong. So you think Sonic is the greatest title of all time. They formed this group called Sonic Youth. That's right. And by the way, the name does come out of a combination of the MC5's Fred Sonic Smith and Big Youth, the reggae DJ, like DJ meaning MC. Yeah. But they coalesce as Sonic Youth and their first recordings actually come out on Glenn Branca's label, neutral records in 1981. That's the first Sonic Youth EP. So they're all kind of in the same, they're still in the Glenn Bronca family at this point. I mean, Bronca's label is able to put out enough physical

plates of vinyl to sad at it, not really. No, no, no. This is small time stuff. This is small time stuff. This is like, in the no collectors, 500 copies of a 45. Nobody's making a living. You're breaking even, baby. It's a cool thing to do basically. And it's a way of, it's like a calling card to get gigs, really, especially in that era, but no one's making a dime.

So listen, and from that moment, they're off to the races kind of establishing a new sound, which they spread all over the planet as they tour, the world, remaining though kind of below the radar. And then they put out this album, Daydream Nation. What can you tell us about that? What I can tell you is that, as I alluded to earlier, this was the hardest decision for this Sonic Youth episode, because my favorite actual Sonic Youth song is this one. This is Teenage Riot from 1988's Daydream Nation. It's kind of one of the best songs of all time.

It's super catchy. It just rolls all the harmonies and melodies and energy rolls through my brain like a weight, like I'm eating a candy bar. Again, not a Sonic Youth expert at all. I heard this song, just another song that I've heard for the first time, admittedly this week. But extremely catchy, really cool song.

Well, that's exactly right. What's happening over time is the progression is they're increasingly writing songs that are a little more accessible. They're a little tighter. Well, that one's a seven-minute song, but over the course of time, it is becoming more accessible music. There are a lot of catchy melodies and lyrics and harmonies. It's

not in the format of radio friendly, which is the big change that's about to happen. Well, yeah, as you said, they rose and they rose and they signed with Gaffin. It would be easy to say that they sold out when they signed a Gevin. But come to find out, they actually got a pretty sweet deal. They were able to maintain full artistic control of their music, and they got a $300,000 advance. You know, in the 80s, this exhausting sort of underground indie punk rock discussion about what selling out is or isn't.

That's another example of something I look back on and it's like, man, there is still a version, like I guess nepo baby and selling it. There's still questions of integrity and authenticity in art and in music. Are you 18 to 24 during this period? Yeah, absolutely. And so I'm very much tuned into like these deep... What's cool? Yeah, man.

And it's really like a vehement opinions at the time instead of in your Instagram comments or YouTube, it would have been in the maximum rock and roll letters. And it would have been just, you know, there were attitudes expressed in other ways. But you felt that it was like kind of some people were upset.

that Sonic Youth signed to Geffen. They thought it was corny. They thought it was selling out that their ideals were no longer valid. Which now seems ridiculous. Thankfully, we've eliminated toxicity from our culture. Absolutely gone. Things have changed wonderfully in these 35 years. So the song we're talking about today is Cool Thing.

It's off of their first Geffen record, which is goo. And I got to tell you, when we decided to talk about Sonic Youth for this episode, I didn't anticipate talking about LL Cool J as well. You know, apparently they were fans of LL. In particular, the band was inspired by his radio album, which has one of the greatest hip-hop songs of all time, Fight Me on it. It's Rock the Bells by L.L. Cool J.

Let's hear a little bit of Rock the Bells. The L.Cool-Jay is hard as hell. Battle anybody, I don't care you, I'm going to tell double L. The Spin Magazine wanted to work with Kim Gordon, and she decided, like, her choice was she wanted to interview LL. Cool Jays. She was legitimately a fan. She loved that.

Yeah. They apparently had been, like, borrowing beats from some of his records. If you go back and listen to the Whitey album, there's some out cool J beats in there. But the second they met, things are, I wouldn't say they go awry, but, you know, it's worlds colliding. Worlds, definitely collide.

Different ideas are cool. Totally. Different things of, like, different, they live in different silos, different worlds of coolnesses. So awkward. Like, she's like, oh, I like Iggy Pop and the Stooges. He's like, I like Bon Jovi. Yeah.

Like, it's like. Right. This is a weird party that we're at. But it makes so much sense. And like, you can complete. I personally, like, going back and reading that, I was noticing, like, I can see how Kim Gordon's world, Bon Jovi is the Antichrist. It is kind of the opposite of everything they're trying to do, right? Maybe in L.L. Cool J.'s world that I'm just speculating to him, Bon Jovi doesn't seem maybe that much different from other guitar bands, but they are popular and he's also popular.

And, like, they are writing accessible songs, and he is also writing accessible songs. I think it's even more fundamental than that. Okay. I've said on previous episode of the show, like, when I was in elementary school, kids would come up to be like, you're that kid who likes Elvis. And I was like, no, I like the Beatles. Like, if you're in a certain environment, all white rock musicians are the same. And I have no doubt that El Cool J was like, I like rock music. Bon Jovi.

And she was like, ooh, what about Iggy Pop? And he probably had no idea. The subtle striations and nuances. She's like, I like the stooges. She was like, those guys who do all that stuff with their faces. But it's true. Like, sometimes when you step back from a sound and you're not like really immersed in the nuanced differences between the two, what they sound like, like what the sex

whistle sounds like and what like Boston sounds like they're both sheenie guitar based and the rock session alien from outer space would be like yeah sounds the same to my ears right 100% yeah and by the way the other part that we want to talk about the other part of the interview that really rubbed the wrong way was some of those views on women kim asked him how he feels about women who have boyfriends or husbands that view him as a sex object to which he replied quote, it's not my problem. The guy has to have control over his woman. To make matters worse, when Kim asked him

if there are any female sex symbols that he could relate to, he replied, oh yeah, every day on the way to work. Now, I'm going to come to a little bit of LL's defense here because in my mind, what he's saying is like, who are my female sex symbols? Well, you got to remember, this is the 80s. Like, there were not a lot of like around the way girls,

to quote another LL Cool J song. There were not a lot of around the way girls anywhere. You know what I mean? And if they were on, you know, I'm just saying, like, now did you pick up a copy of oak? There could be a lot of different types of... Oh, you mean like idealized body type kind of stuff? That's what I'm saying. Like, it was a long time.

It was deep into the 80s before black women, Asian women, Latino women, got any kind of chance at any kind of like, oh, you are the what we're going to place on a pedestal as the symbol of beauty. Grace Jones we talked about. There's some outliers. But you're right. For the most part, there's an idealized beauty standard, which is very central. And I do think that in Kim's mind, what he was saying was like, oh, shoot, I like every woman I see on my way to work. I think that there was a world in which, and I can't get into L.L's brain. But I do think that there was a part of him that was saying, like, I find the sex symbols in my own community.

But let's just say that the chemistry between these two. That's super interesting, right. She didn't read it that way. She just thought he was saying, I like all women. I like, you know, it was sort of a chauvinist pig kind of thing. Regardless of what he was thinking or his intent to hear Kim tell it. and she said this in an interview, quote, it was totally ridiculous for me to assume that we had anything in common.

That's why I tried to make the article show how elite at small the downtown scene that I come out of is. I was trying to make fun of myself. I don't know if that came across, talking about the song, Cool Thing. Right. And her dropping references to the Stooges and sort of, and in fact she has this great quote that she says later on, again, referring to the same interview. She says, I walked in there with my Lower East Side, quote,

scum rocker outfit feeling really, really uncool. So it's interesting to think about her mindset at the time. She comes across as cool. And in part, that's because if you read her very vulnerable biography, autobiography, she's very insecure on the inside. She grew up with an older brother who sort of tormented her, as she talks about extensively, her older brother Keller, who she loved but made her feel very insecure.

Very small, exactly right. So she's bringing a lot to this conversation. They're both bringing a lot to the conversation. They're reading. Yeah. So yeah, so she claims she was making fun of herself in the article, but then she goes and she writes cool thing based on her experience in the interview with L.O. Cool J. And it's pretty obvious she's critiquing him. I mean, maybe it's obvious to you. To me, I feel like when I listen to the song and it's called Cool Thing and I know it's about L.L. Cool J. It might just comes across. And she's literally got a black cat in the video and see her had a Black Panther. I think her own ambiguity about his. She clearly has ambiguous feelings about LL. Cool Jee. I think she's attracted to him. She loves the music. She's not sure about this interview. I don't think that it's very clear in the song one way or the other,

and I think that's by design. The song is called Cool Thing. So is it about L.L. Colgi being cool? Well, it's tough to unpack, right? A little bit. I mean, like, first off, it is called Cool Thing. L.L. had his album Walking with a Panther where he's literally got a big Black Panther on the cover. And then there are all these references when we actually take a look at the music videos.

There are all these references to L.O. Cool Jays going back to Cali. Why don't we show a clip from going back to Cali, the music video? Going back to Cali, rising, surprising, advising, realizing, she's sizing me up. By the way, one of my favorite videos of all times. So minimalists. Yeah. So many LA landmarks. Really fun video.

Some of it has not aged well. But still a really fun video. But now let's take a quick look at a clip from the music video for today's song, Cool Thing. Some similarities there. A couple of similarities. Some references. Some definite references. Listen, and both of these situations, I love the fact that she's referencing the other video.

But if you haven't seen LL's video, you might wonder, is this song about, this is a white girl singing to an anonymous black man, like who isn't named, who isn't vocalizing, like, it's not him. You see Chuck D. say his own lines later. You know, is she objectifying the man, probably. But that's because L.O. Cool J is objectifying the women. So does it require you to know the one to really understand the other a little bit? Because taken out of context, and if you just see the cool thing video, you might be like, what's going on? here with the cats and this anonymous, you know, shirtless black man. Look, we're going to unpack a lot of the similarities between these two songs.

We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to dive into the lyrics and answer the question, is cool thing a not-so undercover LL Cool J disc track? We'll find out. Be right back. Let's talk groceries, specifically your groceries. With Instacart, you want your groceries just the way you like them, right? Well, the Instacart app lets you do just that.

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Welcome back to one song. So, before we get into the STEM's luxury, what else can you tell us about how this song was made? Cool thing is an even split between the four band members. We got Lee Rinaldo. Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, and drummer Steve Shelley, splitting it 25% each. That's what I call band solidarity. unity, right? And by the way, they probably all get along to this day, right? Oh, absolutely. Best of friends. Listen, it should be said that Thurston did cheat on Kim and married this other woman,

and they're estranged, and the band is no more. But at this time, it hadn't happened yet. Great. So 25, 25, 25, 25, 25 split. That's fantastic. So they recorded this at Sorcerer Sound in New York City with a huge budget by Sonic Youth, by indie rock standards, I should say. They had something like 150K for the production budget, which was for them, more than that. than they'd ever seen. As Lee Rinaldo says, it was the first record for a major label. We wanted it to be really good. We were getting five or ten times the amount we usually would get. And we were thinking, how good can we make a record sound compared to Aerosmith, who spend that much money on every record? So they're thinking they're aiming for the fences here on this one.

So they work with a producer called Nick Sonsano. And interestingly, he had some similar Bob Power-esque experiences, being a white dude in the studio in New York in the late 80s, working with a lot of hip-hop artists. He worked with Public Enemy, Ice Cube, run DMC, and he tells the story that working with the bomb squad where they wanted the opposite of everything he was used to, again, similar to Bob Power, changed his approach to engineering. He says, quote, I came to realize it was just as valid and aesthetic

as a more conventional approach to be experimenting with and twisting sounds. So again, Bob Power, go back to our tribe called Quest, two-part episode. Very similarly, he was learning that the way to do this different type of music was kind of different from how you're taught in engineering school, but these new methods lead to new cool artistic results. So long story short, there is a falling out with Nick Sansano

and Ron Sanger Man comes in to take over production duties. They're both credited on the record, but Ron Sanjerman, importantly, took over because Sonic Youth, as was I, was massive fans of his work with bad brains. Together they did Eye Against Eye, another one of my favorite records of all time. Really tough-sounding punk rock. and a lot of abrasive sounds in it. That's eye against eye, bad brains.

One last thing it should be said is that I love how they're sort of going for this high, low thing because Thurston more famously says he would be, quote, happy if the record sounded like Nirvana's first album, Bleach, which was recorded on a $600 budget. So they're sort of all over the place

with what they want their aesthetic to be, and they bring it to this song and they create something really special. Let's start with the drums. Steve Shelley playing the main beat that you hear throughout the song. It sounds so tough. Now importantly

He does a lot of fills in this song Including this one And I just want to call attention to that fill Because it sort of becomes like a It's like a riff or a motif It's like a thing in this song That he does like 20 times So it's its own hook

It's a drum hook Yeah I will say as a person Who only heard this song For the first time this week It was very drivy Yeah Like the drums call out to you From the very beginning

Like it's very drivy drum And it's all catchy Like we'll talk more about like Hooked like getting their hooks in you. Yeah. But I did notice that the drums were one of the things that was like hooky about the song. Yeah, because it's really active.

It's really loud. It's like he's, it's really punk rock energy. And it's recorded really well. So you can kind of hear all the nuance in the subtlety and detail. But he's got these fills. And I wanted to call attention to there's this one fill, which I would argue is like almost like a melody in this song. I'll play it. I'll play one of 20 different variations he plays.

It's this da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Here's another one. And I actually have a question for the music theorists out there in the One Song Nation. I was trying to find what you call this specific rhythm, which switch sides. It's sort of like a paradigal. It's da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. What does that make you think of? There's probably a name for this rhythm.

I asked all my music theory friends. It's something to do with a hella. You also hear it in this song. Can I say as a timpity, as a former timpony? guy in the marching band. Yes, tell me. Nothing comes more natural than going do-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d. Right.

There you go. I did that a million times at football games. And the variation is where every three you leave out the third. So da-da-da-da-da-da-da-stda-da-da-da-da. So it's three over two. It's kind of a three-against four polyrhythm.

It might be a double trisio. That's my friend Claire thinks. My friend Scott thinks it's a hemiola. So question for the one-song Nation, for the specific slice of music theorists nerds. Is there a word, kind of like clave would be three to, like is there a word to describe this pattern? Let us know in the comments.

As I said, the drum was really hooky. The guitars are really hooky. They're very rithy. They're super rithy. And before you play the guitar, let's remind ourselves that it is that a tonal sound? Yes. That kind of like, you know, characterizes this song.

A lot of that's happening in the guitars. Huge, the connection to the Glenn Bronca and the whole setup we had before, but all this avant-garde, late 70s, the no wave and all this other stuff that was happening at the time that influenced them is in the guitars. So let's pause for a second and talk about what Sonic Youth kind of brought to indie music in a huge way. One thing that Sonic Youth are doing is thinking of the guitars as, quote, from Thurston Moore's lips to our ears. The guitar is, quote, a means to an end. It's a tool to write songs with, but it's also a noise machine. So what noises can we get out of this guitar?

Like we get melodies, we get chords, we get arpeggios, we get all these things we're used to, even power chords like crunchy, rhythmic power chords. But they're saying, how can we do something different with the guitar? One of the most important things they do is they use open tunings. It's not a first. Velvet Underground used open tunings. Even Joni Mitchell uses open tunings.

Keith Richards, the blues. It goes back a long ways. But the way they use open tunings is very unique because it's one of their songwriting techniques is they'll take the guitar and take the pegs, the tuning pegs, and sort of mess around until they find something that surprises them. And I actually think that everyone else I just named often does this too.

But as a compositional technique from one song to the next, from one album to the next, they're getting their ideas from like, oh, that's a weird, dissonant sound I'm finding, and it drives a lot of the rest of the songwriting process. So it's the open tunings. It's the eight tonality that comes out of it because they're finding combinations that aren't necessarily chords

in the traditional sense with, like, a third, a fifth, and a seventh, they're finding notes that kind of rub against each other and are really, that are dissonant sounds. And last but not least, they often bring in this drone idea, which goes all the way back to like, you know, Indian Raghaz. It's across a lot of cultures, this single note that goes through the entirety of the song. And in fact, this song is kind of like F sharp. The entire song is sort of F sharp. Everything they do that changes is always on top of an F sharp drone. So there's layers and layers of guitar in this song. Let's start with beginning and I'll start to bring some in and I'll explain what's happening.

So that's just a big build and these are the open tunings. So this song is actually tuned to F sharp in that four of the guitar strings are the F sharp. So these are open tunings. They're playing just open strings. F sharp. The tuning is from lowest to highest F sharp F sharp F sharp and then E and B. So that intro is all F sharp being played on lots of notes on multiple guitars on multiple tracks. So we have this big feeling of a distorted F-sharp sound. So this F-sharp drone kind of goes throughout the entire song, and I'll point it out a little later when it happens. But let's move on to the main riff,

and I will also separate that into pieces. So both Lee Rinaldozer and Thur are playing all these guitar parts, and there are multiple overdubs, and they're trading off those little melody lines. And then when we get to the I don't want to, I don't think so, this is really fun. we can hear all of these different hooks separate. And I'd never notice until this breakdown.

Thurston is, I think, playing this do-na-na-na-da-do-no-no-no-no. And Lee is playing the high part. So collectively, they've got all these hooks being crammed into this one little area. So I'll play that Lee part now. So we have like these three hooks happening at the same time across all these guitars with this drone. It's abrasive and melodic at the same time.

And Glenn Branca's like, you need four. times the number of guitars. You don't have enough guitars, guys. Or the other nine members. And now I'll play for you some of the drone. This happens a little bit later. I'll play the drone and then I'll give you some context. But this is happening kind of underneath almost the entirety of the song. The sort of feedback drone. Oh man, I'm getting busy. And then this is happening on top of that. And that's all happening during the Kim part, which I'll play for context. Hey, cool, that there's something I got to ask you. And we've got feedback happening. 24 bars of this just guitar experimental noise freak out in a pop song on the radio, funded by David Geffen.

And then it builds and it builds until towards the end of it, we get this, what I wrote down as squall. Here's the squall by itself. And then I'll bring in the context. And Kim is doing this. And then they have this 16 bar guitar solo. This is, to me, listening back and like deconstructing this, it's insane to think that like this is our big major label radio like this is going to this is

going to really break through it radio next to bon jovi right and it doesn't break through a radio does it doesn't break through it radio it does become one of their biggest known songs sure small part because the production the budget the marketing effort the fact that i got a copy of it as a j right it's all kind of in the mix there but like this is a crazy experimental glen bronca no wave song right with anyway i love i love like the fact that they it's kind of like a culture jamming, like, experiment. Can we, can we, like, infiltrate the culture and change it? Well, let's give Kim Gordon her dues. She's not only the vocalist and... She's a bassist. She's the bass player. Listen to the delicious, delicious, dirty, giant bass she plays.

How much do we love female bass players? A lot. A lot. Yeah. Especially when they're named Kim. Kim, Kim, Kim, Kim, Kim, Kim, Kim, Kim, Kim, Kim, from Pixies and the Breeders. They just recently did a duet together, actually, in the song, Bye Bye. Why don't we dive into the Kim Gordon bass? Okay, so here is the opening riff. And note how she's hanging on that tritone, that da-na-na-na-da-da. We talked about tritones in the Lady Gaga. That interval is like super evil sounding. Is it evil?

I don't know that it's evil. You know, when I hear this, I don't hear evil. I hear, I'm tough, but I'm also a nerd. I don't know how she managed to put both intelligence and also a standoffish attitude into her bass playing here, but that's the first thing I thought. I was like, this is me, like,

when I'm, like, walking to school with my backpack on, like, they don't think I'm cool, but I'm actually really cool. Yeah, I think you're right. And I have the big, distorted noise, the low end, it's big, it's base,

but it's also distortion, so it's like rock, it's got a rock field time. Dude, I'm telling you, this is the perfect base. It's also a little bit like how, like, when you meet punks in real life, they're like usually the sweetest,

nicest people, but in every 80s movie, they're the person pulling a switch blade on you? Yeah, yeah. Because nobody, really understood that punks are not threatening. Yeah. Like this baseline, it's not threatening. You know, it's not evil to me. It's, it's nerdy, but it's also like, hey, step off, man.

I'm doing my own thing. I love that, yeah. There's the main riff of the song in here. Can you play us a little bit of that? I mean, I think as we've been deconstructing, all those guitars, maybe a minute ago, I was saying there's like three different melodies happening at the same time. There's a fourth thing, and they're like four different riff hooks. Oh, my gosh. But they all happen at once. So while those dudes, Thurston and Lee, are doing that

da-na-na-na-da-da-da-da-da. She's doing a glissondo up the base, which sounds like this. It's so fascinating because it's a total cacophony. And the thing about the word dissonance... There's an atonal cacophony. The thing about all of those words, atonal dissonian cacophony, is what they all share is that they kind of refer to maybe a moment,

but on either side is something that kind of, it's tension that resolves. Yeah. They're also all judgmental in their own way. I mean, sure. There are, their assessments, exactly. I would, they're not judgmental. I'm kind of like, I'm judging you and your bad kind of way, but it's more like

what makes it dissonant is that it sort of comes in between other parts. But those by themselves are all just hooks. And it's this combination that makes you go momentarily and wobbly like, and then you come da-da-da-da-da-a-da. So you have these sort of dissonant moments in time. They're sort of spread out. and they're sandwiched in between all these melodies and hooks. So that's part of how they figured out the formula

to put their atonal Glenbranca stuff into this radio song. There's also, after, you know, we've talked about the riffing, we've talked about the I don't want a section. What about the bridge of this song? You wanted to say something specific about that. Yes. Well, Kim has a little moment in the bridge where she has a little melody she's playing on the bass,

and then she's also starting her little, hey, cool thing. Come over here, sit down beside me. So let's listen to the bass first, and then I'll bring in some context. Meanwhile, there's a drone in the guitar, and the drums are going cuckoo. I just love that little one with that little melody she brings in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Back and forth, dissonant melody, like, you know, interesting. Again, the tritone, it's not an evil note interval, but it is, it has a lot of darkness because, like I mentioned before, it's that Metallica connection. There's a lot of tritones in metal music and in Metallica. So, you know, she's mixing and matching these dissonant sounds, these sort of not atonal, but like these intervals that are dark, there's darkness and light happening back and forth in this really interesting way.

Kim Gordon, just an amazing instrumentalist. We come to the vocals and the lyrics, and before we go any further, obviously Kim Gordon featured vocalists on this, but Chuck D is on this song. And I find that so interesting. And I have a personal connection with public enemy because Fear of the Black Planet

is literally the first rap album I own. is the very first one I bought. I remember going over the Leland's house and my neighbor. I was like, you know, still listening to exclusively Pet Shop Boys. And I hear, pretty much, it was like, for me it was like Pet Shop Boys, New Edition. Hip Hop was on the radio, but like not much. Like it was only on like late, late at night on Saturday night. I go next door.

He has Fear of a Black Planet from the second that I'm on the start. I was hooked. And there's a Fear of a Black Planet angle here because Chuck D was literally in a near. nearby studio recording Fear of a Black Planet. And he's worked with Nick Sansano before because, you know, Nick Sanano's worked with the Bomb Squad. This is just another example of like sometimes it just pays

to be in the studio. When Queen was working with David Bowie, we ended up under pressure. Exactly. Which is amazing. So, Nick Sansano is working with the... Studio serendipity. Exactly. Sometimes you've got to just be in the room where it happens. Nick Sanano is working with Public Enemy

on the album, you know, Black Planet. and while he's working on this song with Sonic Youth, they bring Chuck into do this song. And he's never heard the song before. It's even questionable if he's heard of Sonic Youth. It wouldn't be outrageous to think that maybe he didn't because even though he's in New York, you know, you don't know what his diet is.

But anyway, they play the song back for him and he does all his ad-lives. They're really just ad-lives in one take. He's just responding to what he's hearing in real time. He's responding to what he hears in real time. They pop him in the middle of the song. He says roll tape. He starts listening and the mic is on.

Thurston has this funny quote about Chuck D. coming into the studio. He said, we told him what the song was about. And we weren't sure what he'd think. But we also thought Chuck had a bit of awareness about how marginal factions in their own culture need to rise up. The fact that it was this kind of feminist song, he was all about it. I also find it interesting. This song is going at L.L. Cool J.

Public Enemy was also a deaf jam artist. So you've got two deaf jam artists. I don't think that Chuck D might have known the L.L. I don't think he knew about the L.L. connection. I agree. Because I think that him and L.L. were, like, kind of friends at the time. Maybe.

It's almost like Drake versus Kendrick levels of shade that Sonic Youth is inadvertently accomplishing by bringing one of LL's label mates onto the track. It's true. That's insane. I bet you LLL was like, why'd you do this, man? Layers. So many layers. But let me digress no more.

Let's hear some isolated vocals from Cool Thing. Let's start from the. top. Cool things sitting with a kitty. Now you know you're sure looking pretty. Like a lover not a dancer. Super boy take a little chance here. Wow. Thoughts? I mean, listen, you're sitting with a kitty. I mean, he's literally sitting with a Panther on one of his album so we know exactly he's just walking with a Panther, but he's sitting with it on the cover. Right. Yeah, exactly. Let's hear the chorus because the chorus is a cool J reference. want to

I don't think so I don't want to I don't think so which is a call back to L'O Cool Jays Back to Cali I don't think so Shots fired

Shots fired Or are they? It's ambiguous You know I'm on the fence Even to this day I mean ostensibly she's she's firing shots You know it's a disc track but like It's an admiration track as well

Yeah I mean this is almost like Subdissing in an era when dissing and you blink and you can miss it. Answer tracks were like very explicit. These are like, these are honestly like pretty subtle disses. Yeah, and also the fact of the silos like we were talking about.

It's very possible. Anyone listening to this may not have any notion that L.L. Cool J was in the mix at all. The fact that exactly, I think most Sonic youth fans would not have known a whole lot about L.O. Cool J's catalog. But maybe not in nothing. Maybe not.

But listen, I'm saying that the overlap wasn't quite what it would be today. And obviously there's a big question whether L.L. would have ever even heard the song at the time. I want to hear the beginning of verse number two. Hit me with it. Cool thing. Cool thing. Let me play with your radio.

Move me, turn me on babyo. I'll be your slave. Oh, cool. Give you a shape. Like the echo on slave is not okay with me. Can I just say? Yeah, I got some questions about that one myself. This is so interesting to me because I think even in 2025, there is,

is this tension between feminism, specifically white feminism and like the struggles of African Americans. You know what I mean? Like, so I think what Kim is saying in this line is, oh, you have to have control over your woman. Like she's like, we're fine. Oh, I'll be your slave. But like LL's a black dude.

And so to him, slave is absolutely charged. And, you know, for better or worse, Kim Gordon being a white woman would have been part of the exact power structure that. kept his people in bondage. So it's complicated. You're making me wonder, that's amazing as you're saying that I'm thinking about how in this moment, you know, 30 years ago, Chuck D is in the headphones hearing that. Verse two has just gone by in his ears. And it's about to be his moment to start. And the first thing he says, because he hasn't written anything down, but like what he ends up saying, Kim Gordon says it years later, I think perfectly. She says, and then funnly enough, he just

does these cliches like word up. And you know what? We deserved it. Do we have Chuck's isolated vocals? Word up. Play it. Fear, baby. Fear, baby. Because she's just said... I just want to know, what are you going to do for me? I mean, are you going to liberate us girls from male, white, corporate oppression?

Exactly to your point, y'all. I think you're dead right. Because I'm picturing Chuck, the microphone's on. He just heard that. And then he chimes in with this. Tell it like it is Ye Word up

That sounds so sarcastic now Tell it like it is Word up I mean it has to go either way This is so classic Like Liberal politics Versus like the streets

Which sometimes their goals are aligned And sometimes it's really not clicking I think Chuck's a little nonplussed here By the whole male white Perper depression thing I think that's very possible Chuck We know that you've listened to a couple episodes of the show.

If you want to go on the record and say you didn't know us about LL or like you were fully aware of what, let us know. Just let us know what was in your head. We want to get in your head one song reaching out to Chuck D of, you know, one of our heroes of hip hop. Hit us up. Okay, luxury. So what do you think the legacy of cool thing and Sonic Youth is? Listening back to this song and like putting myself in the headspace of like where I was at the time. Like, no Nirvana was about to happen.

Yeah. But it was exciting that Sonic Youth was happening. happening in this new way. But in retrospect, it really does land the plane, like listening to what we heard, the micro tunings and the 24 bars of atonal drone. It's like, it's not surprising that it took a nirvana to kind of really break from the punk underground. But it's important to recognize that these bands were very aligned. Like prior to that, the difference between them, it's a lot, it's a little bit, but it's also everything. In 1991, the year that punk broke, it wasn't Sonic Youth that was breaking punk, it was Nirvana.

But Nirvana and Sonic Q, listen to each other and had a lot of influences in common. Well, it's almost like, you know, Blur comes along. But Blur never really blew up in America like Oasis. Sometimes the American market is finicky. And you just never know which... Timing. Which sound and the timing has to be correct. But I like that you said you had to get back into your brain as it was in 1990 and 1991.

Because as a person coming to this music now, it just sounds different to me. I don't have the adolescent memories attached to it. It kind of reminds me when I tried to go back and watch the Sopranos from the beginning. And I was a little bit like, okay, it's fine. Because the Sopranos... Well, because the Sopranos was so influential on every show that I've loved since then.

That's interesting. Sometimes when you go back to the original source, it doesn't hit quite the same as it did at the time because you've had all the things that have been influenced by it. And with Sonic Youth, I think that my... I love this band for them being artists first. I like the fact that they set a paradigm for so many things that I love to come.

And I'm enthusiastic about listening to whatever music Kim and the others come up with now, we played a little bit by the beginning, because clearly they are artists who are in tune to the moment. And if we ride into 2025 with them, I have no doubt they're going to have much more cool music to come. That's perfectly put in to bring us full circle to the fact that last year in 2024, we have this Kim Gordon song, which is like a Grammy-nominated song. I really like it. I was trying to deconstruct what it is about it.

Sometimes with these things, all it takes is one element being swapped out for something else, right? So I just wanted to show you that if we do that to Cool Thing, if we take out Steve Shelley's messy punk rock drums and put in kind of a standard trapbeat, this could have gone on her record last year. Blow my mind, my man. I'll bring in some guitar now. I think they should release that. I think you just came up with the remix, but man. Okay, Diallo, so it's time for one more song, the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gem with you,

The One Song Nation, and with each other. You go first. Thanks, ma'am. My one more song today is a little unorthodox. I always feel like you can find great music from the most unlikely sources. So today, I give you the, the commercial jingle for a defunct candy bar known as Whatchamma call it? What?

So we would never play a commercial for an existing product. We will not sell out here at one song. Drive Davis. We once bonded over that Nestle Cunch commercial. Nestle makes the very best. And I think Faith No More started coming in a concert. And people were singing along. I know.

sometimes a commercial is just way better than it needs to be. Such a good song. It's the songwriting. That's a great song. It transcends genre, including commercial, television commercial for product versus song. It almost makes you want to go out and find the high-quality version and play it out at your gigs when we're DJ. Which we definitely won't do. What is your one more song today?

Okay, so since we've been talking about all of these elements of like kind of art rock, minimalism, drones, all this stuff, you know, it's not just Sonic Youth and it's not just Joni Meta. and it's not just Velvet Underground, a lot of bands have taken these ideas and put them in new directions. There's a metal band called Sun that's like basically a drone band. It looks like Sun O, but you don't pronounce the O that's based on the amp they use. But they sound like this. That's a 12-minute song. It does mostly that with some variation. Ready for TikTok. When you are seeing this or experiencing this live, that is what's going down. I mean, you can listen to this record loud too, but the experience of volume as a an element of your music of noise.

Like my bloody Valentine, I left that concert. I couldn't hear for three weeks. It was just noise. But you know, there were the John cages. There were these people who came along who could almost to call John Cage a musician is both true, but it's also more concept art.

I think they all sort of owe something to those artists who came along in the 50s and 60s. Well, it's funny you mentioned John Cage because I found a quote when he heard Glenn Bronca, he hated it. He's like, what is this noise? He said it made him afraid. So that's going back to what we were saying earlier, it's like when all of these historical figures,

you kind of like blend together. But at the time, they all had really strong opinions about what was cool, what wasn't cool, what was good, what wasn't good. So John Cage, Glenn Bronca in our minds now, it's just like, oh, that's experimental music from an era. But John Cage was like, couldn't handle the Glenbranca stuff.

As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, DIA, L-L-L-O, and on TikTok at Diallo-R-R-L. And you can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-R-Y, and on TikTok at Luxury X-X. And now OneSong officially has its own Instagram and TikTok. Go follow at One-Song podcast for exclusive content.

You can also watch full episodes of One-Song on YouTube and Spotify. Just search for One-Song podcasts. We'd love it if you like and subscribe. Also be sure to check out the One-Song Spotify playlist for all of the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you've made it this far, we think that means

you liked our podcast. So please don't forget to give us five stars, leave a review, and share with someone you think would like this show. Luxury help us do this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and music ologist luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo

Riddell. And this is one song. We'll see you next time. This episode was produced by Melissa Duanyas. Our video editor is Casey Simonson. Our associate producer is Jeremy Binbo. Mixing by Michael Hardman and engineering by Eric Hicks. Production supervision by Razak Boykin. Additional production support from Z. Taylor. The show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Wale, and Leslie Guam.