Protest Song Of The Week: 'BYE BYE '25' By Kim Gordon

Screen shot from the music video for Kim Gordon’s “BYE BYE ‘25”

Kim Gordon’s second solo album, released in March of last year, was critically acclaimed. The first song on the album, “BYE BYE,” is her most popular song on Spotify—played 2.5 million times.

In response to President Donald Trump’s censorship of language, Gordon redid “Bye Bye.” She transformed the track into a protest song that lists several of the words that he has banned or tried to prohibit any United States government agency from using. It was released on June 12, days before the “No Kings” demonstrations that mobilized around five million or more people.

Gordon, the 72-year-old bassist, guitarist, and vocalist for Sonic Youth, said producer and collaborator Justin Raisen came up with the idea of redoing “BYE BYE.”

“When I was thinking of lyric ideas, it occurred to me to use words taken from a site that had all the words that Trump has essentially banned, meaning any grant or piece of a project or proposal for research that includes any of those words would be immediately disregarded or ‘cancelled.’”

“I guess Trump does believe in cancel culture, because he is literally trying to cancel culture,” Gordon added.

“BYE BYE ‘ 25” is the last two minutes and twenty-nine seconds of the original, a blend of ambient and industrial sounds laid over a trap beat.

Gordon recites the Ministry of Truth’s eliminated words: “Mental health, “electric vehicle,” “Gulf of Mexico,” “energy conversion,” “gay,” “bird flu,” “advocate,” “pregnant person,” “immigrants,” “intersex,” “victim,” “male dominated,” and “care.”

The grimy and bass-heavy sound that was concocted for the tune swirls for 13 seconds before Gordon resumes her recitation of this list of banned words.

In the music video, Gordon shows a blurry clip of Los Angeles under attack by militarized police forces. She then stands in front of a construction site with cue cards—similar to how Bob Dylan held cue cards in “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (1965).

The list of words “scrubbed from government websites and documents and flagged for review by federal agencies,” according to PEN America, is now more than 350 words.

All money raised from the song, and a t-shirt for the song, goes to NOISE FOR NOW. Gordon says the nonprofit “connects with and financially support grassroots organizations that work in the field of Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice.”

NOISE FOR NOW has organized several benefit concerts for reproductive health care and released a 49-song benefit album in 2022 with artwork from Gordon that was available for one day.

The original song from Gordon was a list for escaping psychological trauma. The list in this version communicates some of the trauma that the Trump administration is inflicting through its demonization and weaponization of language.

Listen/watch Kim Gordon’s “BYE BYE ’25”: