When Sonic Youth signed to Geffen Records after 1988’s alt-rock landmark Daydream Nation, Gordon’s lyrics became more explicitly feminist in songs such as “Kool Thing”, “Tunic Song for Karen” and “Swimsuit Issue”, which she wrote after discovering that one Geffen executive was being sued for sexual harassment. “I guess I had an authority problem,” she says. “In rock music people have certain assumptions that it makes people more enlightened and it really doesn’t. It was the same thing playing for Neil Young’s audience [in 1991] and being reminded that hippies can be really narrow-minded. We were around people who felt like, ‘We’re groovy, we’re cool,’ but they were so sexist. It was just in your face all the time. IÂ was looking for subject matter, and I thought: ‘If I’m a woman, I can write about all these things. I don’t have to write a love song.'”
via Kim Gordon: life after Sonic Youth | Music | The Observer.
Against The Grain 