This story is taken from the spring 2026 issue of Dazed, which is on sale internationally now. Order a copy of the magazine here.

Kim Gordon has been capturing the hearts, ears and minds of angsty youth for decades. As a singer and bassist with Sonic Youth, the highly influential band she founded with her ex, Thurston Moore, Gordon is a pioneering figure in alternative music, synonymous with 80s and 90s American underground culture, skater-girl style (with her cult brand X-Girl) and even New York itself.

Gordon has been painting, writing, acting and directing since Sonic Youth broke up in 2011, but it’s through her work as a solo musician that she continues to connect with young people. Her trap-infused second solo album, The Collective, found a new generation of fans on TikTok in 2024 (“I’m pretty surprised, but yay, the internet!” she says), while her forthcoming album, Play Me, continues her collaboration with LA producer Justin Raisen, building on her punk-and-grunge-inspired internet rap and expanding into more melodic beats. “I’m motivated by rhythm, and I knew I wanted it to be even more beat-oriented than the last one.”

Gordon is rarely literal. The choppy, stream-of-consciousness sentences on the new album are her way of revolting against the billionaire class, the demolition of democracy in America and the AI-fuelled flattening of culture. The title track incorporates odd phrases – “chilling after work”, “feel free” – taken from the names of Spotify playlists, inspired by her dislike of the music streaming platform. The album is a middle finger to the algorithm and to passive music listening in general, its title an invitation and a challenge all at once. 

Here, the alt-rock icon curates a syllabus of music, films, books and other cultural artefacts that have come to shape her thinking. Like Gordon’s repertoire, they all hint towards a questioning of the status quo. “It’s all kind of a continuation,” she says. “I’m doing the things I’ve always done.”

WATCH: PIERROT LE FOU, JEAN LUC GODDARD (1965) 

“My brother took me to see Pierrot le Fou when I was 14. He wasn’t always nice to me, so it was one of the only really nice things he did. It was playing at a little theatre on the East Side, which was a trek from where we lived. I felt grown up seeing the movie; it was really eye-opening. The idea of the antihero was new to me, and Anna Karina became an icon to me in terms of her style. It’s that French girl thing.”

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“One of the bands I saw in New York that really inspired me was Suicide. I’d never seen anything like it. Alan Vega was down in the audience; it was scary and electrifying. I also saw Public Image Ltd when The Flowers of Romance had just been released. There was a huge movie screen with a film about one of them getting into a trash can in the alley. People got really angry and started throwing chairs at the screen.” 

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“When I was 15, I would fly to San Francisco for $10 on a Friday night and stay with a friend of my parents whose son was a couple of years older than me. We would go to shows at the Fillmore. I remember seeing Cream and Jefferson Airplane. Then, when I lived in New York, Thurston and I would go to LA to visit my parents. We went to a gig at a house where Black Flag was playing in the kitchen. Henry Rollins would just slither up to you.”

LISTEN: BLONDE ON BLONDE, BOB DYLAN (1966)

“I used to listen to the lyrics in Bob Dylan’s early records a lot. They are abstract poetry in a way. Whether or not he claimed to be political, the context gives meaning to his words. Blonde on Blonde is maybe my favourite record of his and, although I never really listen to Dylan after 1970, I also write in this abstract way. When I was working on the first solo record, I started thinking about his lyrics, which I hadn’t really thought of as a big influence until then.”

READ: DH LAWRENCE 

“I probably read Lady Chatterley’s Lover for the erotic parts, but it’s basically about class. DH Lawrence’s characters talk about being dissatisfied with post-industrial life, and that was kind of a surprise to me. We just accepted that people went to work in factories, but what was their life before that? After World War I, people could see the impact of weapons made in factories, which were ultimately destructive. Women in Love was my favourite. I don’t know if it was banned, but when it came out it was considered incredibly racy.”

READ: ROCK MY RELIGION, DAN GRAHAM (1993( Rock My Religion, Dan Graham (1993)

“When I was at Otis Art Institute I had this teacher, John Knight. He told me to go see this artist, Dan Graham, who was kind of a know-it-all who wrote a lot about feminism and women’s voices in punk. We became close when I moved to New York and he took me to see bands like DNA, Mars and Theoretical Girls. It was much freer than punk rock and set me off on a course to play music. One time he got into an argument with Mike Kelley about who started punk rock: Was it the Stooges or the Dead Boys? I just thought it was hilarious.”

DISCOVER: BRUCE NAUMAN

“I saw this show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art when I was a teenager. It had Andy Warhol and Bruce Nauman in it and I remember this Nauman piece, Green Light Corridor, that was a long, narrow hallway lit up with green fluorescent light. I didn’t go to the museum that much growing up, so it was cool. I like Nauman’s work a lot. I think that it opens up the idea of what sculpture is, and it makes you think about your body in relation to it.”

FOLLOW: @DETROITHOUSECOLLECTIVE

“I like this Instagram and often put it on my Stories. It’s basically just people dancing outside on a Sunday afternoon, but it has such a good vibe and it feels like the people are having such a great time. It’s such a contrast to everything else on my algorithm.”

This story is taken from the spring 2026 issue of Dazed, which is on sale internationally now. Order a copy of the magazine here.