Thurston Moore on Sonic Youth’s obsession with Madonna
Many artists within the alternative scene bend under the pressure to be cool. They worship guitars and shun their pop peers, reluctant to praise or even hit play on anything that might veer into the mainstream. As one of the most innovative and influential bands within that sphere, you might expect Sonic Youth to be guitar purists. Really, they had an undying and unhidden love for one of pop’s all-time greats: Madonna.
Though they both spawned out of New York in the early 1980s, Madonna and Sonic Youth inhabited very different scenes. While the former found her way in nightclubs and daring bouts for attention, Sonic Youth honed their sound alongside experimentalists like Swans. But, contrary to the pretension that often pervades those scenes, Thurston Moore and his bandmates harboured a genuine admiration for Madonna.
“We’re the same age, born in the same year, we lived in the same neighborhood in the early ‘80s,” Moore recalled during a conversation with Shondaland, “So, the fact that she became, like, a nova personality on the global stage was fascinating unto itself.” Moore was enamoured with one song in particular, the iconic ‘Into the Groove’.
Released in 1985, the track became a dance staple, and Moore even believed it to be “as special a song as anything that was happening in underground music.” Though those around him questioned his love for the pop artists, Moore was committed to defending her and was more than open to the beauty and talent within spheres other than their own.
“We also got a lot of heat from some people saying, ‘You’re giving Madonna a credential that she can’t buy otherwise. For you as arbiters of what’s going on in underground music to say Madonna is cool and ‘Into the Groove’ is a great song, you’re giving her that for free.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t care.’ [Laughs.] I mean, really, I don’t care,” he explained.
Moore took his love for ‘Into the Groove’ into the studio just a few years after its release with Sonic Youth side project Ciccone Youth. No stranger to a cover, their 1988 album, The Whitey Album, featured takes on two Madonna tracks – ‘Burnin’ Up’ and ‘Into the Groove’, which they renamed ‘Into the Groovey’.
Though it seems like an odd pairing at first, Moore and his bandmates smashed the track, taking it into far sludgier territory with droning guitars and shrugged vocals. It’s nowhere near as fun as the original, but it’s a perfect ode to their pop icon and to increasing respect between the scenes. Listen to the cover below.
