Sonic Youth - Little Trouble Girl

What this video is

Released in April 1996 as the second single from Sonic Youth's Washing Machine (DGC, 1995), 'Little Trouble Girl' arrived at the apex of alternative rock's mainstream penetration while Sonic Youth themselves remained emblematic of downtown New York art-rock credibility. The song is a self-conscious homage to Phil Spector's girl group wall-of-sound aesthetic filtered through No Wave dissonance, with Kim Gordon's…

Why it matters

A key artifact of the mid-90s alternative rock video canon, demonstrating how major-label alt-rock acts could commission high-concept, art-cinema-inflected videos that engaged critically with gender, identity, and pop history. The video's Godard homage and feminist subtext place it within a…

The director

Mark Romanek (b. September 18, 1959, Chicago, IL) is an American director of film, music videos, and commercials. He directed his first music video in 1986 for The The's 'Sweet Bird of Truth.' Over the 1990s he became one of the defining auteurs of the MTV…