Kim Gordon doesn't like being called a legend.
However, on Instagram, fans declare that without her, they would barely exist.
And for good reason: with Sonic Youth, her group for twenty years, the American shaped the face of independent rock with noisy flamboyance and sharp-edged chords.
You have to have seen her on stage, in a miniskirt and guitar in hand, to realize the field of possibilities that she opened up for generations of musicians.
Much more than a
Girl in a Band,
the title of her autobiography published in 2015, Kim Gordon, 70, is a monument in perpetual construction.
Who is striking, when you meet her, with her Californian blue eyes, her impeccable style (this summer, in Los Angeles, hordes of young girls lined up from dawn when she emptied her closets for a charity sale ), his crooked smiles and his disarming shyness.
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After the end of Sonic Youth in 2011 and her painful divorce from guitarist Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon rediscovered her first love, contemporary art.
Recently, she has painted abstract canvases in which the shape of a cell phone is cut out – an object to which she confesses to being addicted.
Technology, feminism, the dizziness of a world where futility and depth merge: themes that she explores on
The Collective,
second solo album made with producer Justin Raisen, to be released on March 8.
An experimental, galvanizing record, which sees her interact with crushed
beats
, broken glass and other tortured guitars: because she no longer has anything to prove, Kim Gordon avoids concessions, circuitous paths.
A path that we dream of taking.
Madame Figaro.
– What is the inspiration for
The Collective
’s lyrics ?
Kim Gordon.
– It comes from this impression that the world is becoming more and more crazy.
During the pandemic, I read the books of Octavia Butler, an American science fiction author.
It's a bit dark but quite realistic, and this album feels a bit like a soundtrack to me.
I feel that technology is progressing, but humanity is moving in the opposite direction.
This record allows me to feel like my voice is heard in this chaos.
And then I always feel better when I'm in action.
The album comes with a note in which you wrote that you wanted to “explore something unknown, even if it means failing.” For what ?
Everyone cares so much about success.
Of course, there is nothing positive about failure if it deprives us of essential things, like a roof over our heads.
It's creation that I'm talking about: I managed to have what we call success.
But topping the
charts
was never my goal.
For me, success is the opportunity to have your music heard, your art exhibited.
Failure is not achieving it.
To have an artistic idea that no one understands.
Or not being able to make it happen.
Has this happened to you?
With painting, yes.
Not with music, because I improvise a lot, and I work on mistakes, on performances.
Of course, I have been disappointed after a concert that didn't go as planned.
But I generally don't have the same expectations of music as I do of visual art.
No doubt because I studied the latter, even though I know nothing about music: everything comes to me from my experience, from playing it for years.
I never really tried to improve, I learned from my mistakes.
And now maybe I know more about what I want.
What I don't like is when feminism is made a brand
Kim Gordon
What is the idea behind the title
I'm a Man
?
It was written as a reaction to those right-wing politicians who feel like feminism has destroyed men.
As if they were ignoring a whole part of the evolution of our lives, by evoking a time when masculine identity was based on protecting others.
But men began to feel lost in the 1960s and 1970s;
the series
Mad Men
is a great example of this, with this character falling into the credits.
Then they became consumers: like women, they are the target of marketing that pushes them to wonder what they look like, if they smell good.
Some people feel so lost that they become aggressive.
This excessive reaction to feminism baffles me: why now?
Why so late?
You don't like that word, but how do you feel when young women call you a "legend" of feminism?
It doesn't matter, so much the better if it inspires them.
What I don't like is when feminism is made into a brand.
A friend of mine felt that the film
Barbie
uses feminism to serve the interests of a multinational: it's an argument that makes sense.
I find the film entertaining enough, it could have been much worse.
Do you feel the same way about rock music?
Above all, I have the impression that there isn't much interesting to listen to anymore, apart from experimental music, underground rap.
To me, everything looks the same.
I don't mean this in a disparaging way, but, for example, when I try to listen to Taylor Swift, it's like it's made for another brain, maybe younger.
My guilty pleasure, on the other hand, is seeing middle-aged men proclaiming on the Internet how much they love her.
As if that would make them cool...
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You won't go see her in concert?
No, especially if it lasts three hours!
You are still considered a fashion icon. What relationship do you have with your image?
I like some photos, others I don't.
I like those from the book
No Icon
(Éditions Rizzoli, in 2020), which I didn't want to do at first.
After a book on Chloë Sevigny that I prefaced, the publisher wanted to cover another feminist icon, but I did not want to be designated like that.
So we called the book
No Icon.
These are just photos of me over time, a sort of retrospective of the weird outfits I've worn.
It's not so bad looking at these photos.
We've gotten older, but we might as well appreciate them.
Because it's not going to get better.
The Collective,
by Kim Gordon (Matador)