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Certain Songs #2352: Sonic Youth – “Kissability”

April 25, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Daydream Nation
Year: 1988

. . .

The first song on side four of Daydream Nation — and the last song before the prog-bating Trilogy of songs that closed the record — was Kim Gordon’s anti-casting couch screed, “Kissability,” which was both the shortest (not counting the answering machine recording with effects “Providence”) and the most intense song on the album.

“Kissability” is driven by Steve Shelley’s perpetual tom rolls and relatively subdued guitars from Lee Ranaldo & Thurston Moore, over which Gordon inhabits a scunmbag dude with power coming on to someone with considerably less.

Look into my eyes, don’t you trust me?
You’re so soft, you make me hard
I’ll put you in a movie, don’t you wanna?
You could be a star, you could go far
You’ve got kissability
You sigh hard, don’t you wanna?
You’ve got twistability
You could be a star, it ain’t hard

Gordon doesn’t let up for even a second on the chorus as the guitars continue to dance all around her, getting ever more dissonant with each word.

You’re driving me crazy
You smell so sick
I feel so tired
You make me sick
You’re driving me crazy
I feel so sick
You’re driving me crazy
Give us a kiss

It’s so intense, actually, that when after the second chorus, Ranaldo & Moore take off into a hyperspeed guitar break, it’s almost a relief, and one of the reasons is that “Kissability” is one of the catchier songs on the record, but who wants to sing along with “you’ve got twistability”? Which, yeah, is kind of the point: “Kissability” is a catchy song about ritual sexual abuse, and not even the last word that Kim Gordon will sing on the subject.

“Kissability”

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Filed Under: Certain Songs Tagged With: Daydream Nation, Kissability, Sonic Youth

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Previously on Medialoper

  • Certain Songs #2698: That Petrol Emotion – “Sensitize”
  • Certain Songs #2697: That Petrol Emotion – “Big Decision”
  • Certain Songs #2696: that dog. – “hawthorne”
  • Certain Songs #2695: that dog. – “long island”
  • Certain Songs #2694: that dog. – “minneapolis”

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