Sonic Youth’s album cover “Goo” has become the king of memes

In a message In a photo that made the rounds two weeks ago, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un took turns driving a Russian limousine in Pyongyang, North Korea. The sight of two dictators driving around was unsettling—but also made for a particular kind of mockery. Shortly after the photo surfaced, a meme featuring the shot with the words “Sonic Youth LP” above it began making the rounds—the latest addition to the never-ending tradition of honoring or parodying the cover of the now-defunct band’s album. Goo.

Published in 1990, Goo —Sonic Youth’s first record for Geffen Records’ DGC label, which marked their entry into the world of major labels—maintained the band’s connection to underground culture in a number of ways. For the cover, artist Raymond Pettibon, a friend of the band, contributed a hand-drawn copy of an infamous photograph from England in the mid-’60s: a couple, Maureen Hindley and David Smith, on their way to give evidence in the trial of Hindley’s sister Myra and her lover Ian Brady, who were accused of killing several children in the so-called “Moor Murders.”

“The whole text ‘I killed my parents and left’ of this particular Pettibon drawing was my first reaction when selecting the images for Goo”, says Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth RS. “The bold combination of criminals taking to the streets and a rock’n’roll band taking to the streets seemed a daring gesture at the time, and it also had a bit of Jack Kerouac’s beat literature in it, with all the On the way Motive.”

As Moore and others recall, Goo Homage was probably Spooa 1991 single by Ohio indie band Prisonshake. When their label asked them to honor a well-known album cover for their own single, the band decided on the barely one-year-old Goo. “We liked the simplicity, the black and white aspect and the line under the title that ends to the right,” says Robert Griffin of Prisonshake. “It was unforgettable.” In reference to the way the Residents designed the cover of Meet the Beatles For one of their own records, drummer and artist Scott Pickering transformed Hindley and Smith into scary monsters.

Since then, parodies of Goo have made it to the Gen X version of the much-vaunted Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Abbey Road artwork. In memes and on T-shirts, Smith and Hadley were replaced by a crazy hodgepodge of different couples: Walter White and Jesse Pinkman from breaking Bad; Snoop and Dr. Dre (“Chronic Youth”); Han Solo and Princess Leia; Bart Simpson and Milhouse Van Houten; Putin and Donald Trump (titled “Chronic Douche”); Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie; Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy (which at least ties in with the serial killer connection of the original); Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei in My cousin Winnie; even the Blues Brothers. In 2015, a meme (featuring shirts) appeared featuring Taylor Swift and a cat. In 2018, Beyoncé was spotted wearing a shirt that was a mix of Pettibon’s illustration and Jay-Z’s artwork.

“These memes develop a life of their own,” says Pettibon RS“I hesitate to analyze it or understand it. Any attempt would be futile, and why should I even do it? It might break the spell? Disrupt the flow?”

For her contribution, Spanish artist Paula Garcia integrated figures from Stranger Things. “I wanted to parody this cover because it is so iconic,” says Garcia, “and because being able to tell a story in text form on the cover itself gave me the opportunity to better stage certain scenes from a television series.” Lewis also used an image of Steve Carell wearing sunglasses for a Goo/The Office mash up.

“It’s like a still from a movie or a comic panel, and you can put these two characters in there,” says Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo of the trend. “It says a lot about Raymond and his artwork, which has this devilish undertone. I don’t even know how much Sonic Youth has to do with that now. People have just applied it to so many different situations. It’s like folk art now.”

The pairings are not always absurd or silly. Nicole Aline Legault grew up in the Canadian province of New Brunswick and became a fan of Sonic Youth in the 1990s. Since she couldn’t find any band merchandise in her small town, she made her own Goo Shirts back then. Cut to 2020: Legault, then a multimedia artist in Montreal, was struggling with isolation during the pandemic and issues of systemic racism in the face of the Black Lives Matter movement. “I became much more aware of my privilege,” she says. “That information was so front and center. It felt more intense.”

At that moment, Legault was thinking about how he could honor the memory of black medical worker Breonna Taylor and Oklahoma teenager Isaiah Lewis, both of whom were shot and killed by police. Coincidentally, it was the 30th anniversary of Goo was released in June. Legault recalls: “I love this album and it just came about on a whim. Something just clicked.”

The result was her own Goo Tribute, with drawings by Taylor and Lewis standing in for Smith and Hindley, and the original text (“I stole my sister’s boyfriend. It was all whirlwind, heat and lightning. Within a week we killed my parents and ran”) replaced with “The police killed Breonna Taylor. The police killed Isaiah Lewis. It was all whirlwind, heat and lightning. No justice, no peace. No justice, no peace. No justice, no peace.” The image was so haunting that Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon tweeted it and a company Legault approached to see if they would sell T-shirts with the illustration. (Legault only agreed if the work was donated and all proceeds went to a GoFundMe campaign in Taylor’s memory and helped pay for a headstone for Lewis.)

Reflecting on Legault’s and Putin/Kim Jong Un’s use, Ranaldo says, “They can seem timely and political. They convey the news in a certain way.”

Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth, who manages the band’s archives, estimates that “hundreds and hundreds” of Goo There are now parodies – so many that the band has considered compiling them all in an illustrated book.

But even 34 years later Goothe members of Sonic Youth admit they are a little confused by the ongoing tributes. “I don’t think Raymond or Sonic Youth thought the image would be reproduced to this extent,” says Moore. “When I see such demagogic clowns as Putin and Kim Jong Un entering the stream, I groan because I’d rather not give energy to these warmongers. But like everything in our punk rock universe, nothing is sacred.”