The thing about Kim Gordon’s account of her break up with Thurston Moore is that does contain ingredients that make it ripe for sensationalism – Affair! Younger Girl! Interloper in the Sonic Youth circle! Lying Husband! Jilted Wife! etc – should editors choose to make that leap. And so it proved, as music website after music website soon reported on the Gordon-Moore breakup in exactly those sort of exclamatory tones, completely ignoring the fact that the article focused on Gordon as a modern feminist hero rather than an abandoned wife. In an example that showed particular disinterest in the majority of Goodman’s article, the Brooklyn Vegan blog tweeted a link to their coverage of the article under the title ‘Kim Gordon Tells Why She And Thurston Moore Are Divorcing And Stuff’.
While admittedly Moore and Gordon’s split did come as something of a shock to many – not least because it seemed to herald the end of, in Sonic Youth, one of the most important alternative music/modern art projects of the past thirty years – how well does it reflect on music journalism that the most sensationalist facts of one well-written, well-informed piece (commissioned, with actual money no doubt, by Elle) can be skimmed off to create a headline for a hundred other websites?
