Kim Gordon has shared a reworked version of “Bye Bye,” the lead single from 2024’s The Collective, that’s now a protest song against President Donald J. Trump. The new version, dubbed “Bye Bye 25!,” swaps the original lyrics—Gordon’s packing list for a trip—for words that the current administration has flagged and used to cancel grant projects, research proposals, and more. Check out the song’s music video, co-directed by Gordon and Vice Cooler, below.
“[Producer and collaborator] Justin Raisen had this idea to redo ‘Bye Bye’ starting at the end of the song,” explained Gordon. “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.”
The new track arrives ahead of the “No Kings” protests that are expected to happen nationwide on Saturday, June 14. Proceeds from the sale of both “Bye Bye 25!” and its promotional T-shirt will be donated to reproductive rights nonprofit Noise for Now. Among the words rattled off in the song are “female,” “climate change,” “Hispanic,” “women,” “mental health,” and “immigrants.” Organizations that have been affected so far by the president’s administrative orders and policies include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), National Science Foundation (NSF), and NASA, among others.
Both “Bye Bye” and The Collective were nominated for Grammy Awards at the 2025 ceremony. Those nods marked the first time Gordon was ever in the running for a Grammy, as neither she nor Sonic Youth were ever nominated prior. Late last year, The Collective got a digital deluxe edition, featuring the additional tracks: “ECRP” and “Bangin’ on the Freeway.”
Read about The Collective at No. 10 in “The 50 Best Albums of 2024.”
