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Originally Posted by Derek
I'm surprised that many of you think of the Youth's albums in terms of who sings what songs.
I'm not really bothered if Lee doesn't sing too much or too often or what, I just like the band as a whole, regardless of who's singing.
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I agree completely. The band creates this illusion that the vocalist on a given track is "in charge" of that song, but if you really know about the band that's not at all how it works. They usually write their songs together rather than one person showing up to practice with a song ready to go, which is why so many songs have begun as instrumentals.
Sometimes the person who writes the lyrics doesn't even end up singing it - I highly suspect Thurston wrote the words to "Starpower", which I 've suspected since seeing them in 1986, when he sang it. Because he does the lead vocal on "Or" I had this image in my head of him playing the acoustic guitar on it, until I saw them do it live, and Lee was actually playing the acoustic part.
The whole thing about whether it's a "Thurston" song or a "Lee" song or a "Kim" song is just not what Sonic Youth are about really. That might work for Sebadoh or the Grateful Dead, but Sonic Youth is a highly cooperative non-competative unit!