Girl in a Band: Kim Gordon Expands Her Iconic Memoir

A pioneer of post-punk sound and eternal arbiter of cool, Kim Gordon needs no introduction. The Sonic Youth frontwoman and creative multi-hyphenate has remained at the crux of alternative culture since the early ’90s, and she hasn’t broken her stride.

Following the 2024 release of her Grammy-nominated solo album The Collective, Gordon reflects on her latest era in a brand new chapter of her memoir “Girl in a Band”. Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, the New York Times bestseller endures as an iconic piece of music lore, defining a generation.

 

Exploring moments of loss, gain, and reinvention, Gordon writes of her journey with raw honesty and deep rumination. As an enduring fixture in culture, she muses on the passage of time and a coming home to music, or in her own words:

 

“By the time this book comes out, the tenth-anniversary edition of my memoir, I’ll have finished a new record. Another tour will have come and gone. We will have been to Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, where the last Sonic Youth gigs happened. That version of my life feels a million years away. I wonder if I’ll be sad when we play Santiago, Buenos Aires, and São Paulo, where Sonic Youth, my marriage, and my memoir ended. The stoic posture of those final dates feels like a distant memory, but every now and then I let my heart sink into all that happened. And the truth is, I mostly just feel lucky. This is not the future I could have predicted or envisioned. A solo career. My brother’s death. A trip to the Grammys. How fast and strange the world is. Music once again feels like a place I’ve never been, slightly familiar, but without a safety net. Sometimes the words don’t come until my mouth is open and my mind is just following along with the rhythm.”

 

Along with Gordon’s new chapter, the anniversary edition also features a foreword by author Rachel Kushner, known for titles such as “Telex from Cuba” and “The Flamethrowers”.