There are songs in the second half of the compilation that are just as iconic, just as “hit”-like for followers of the band: “Teenage Riot”, “Expressway to Yr Skull”. It takes until track seven to reach the ‘00s, track eight to reach the ‘80s, the decade where the band began. The fifth track is another one from Goo the sixth, the band’s cover of the Carpenters’ “Superstar”, released in 1994. Hits Are for Squares begins squarely in this era of Sonic Youth. These are iconic songs, songs that cemented the notion of Sonic Youth as the cooler, older siblings of Nirvana and their contemporaries. The same goes for 1990’s “Kool Thing”, the fourth track here. Were “Bull in the Heather”, off 1994’s Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, and “100%”, the first single off Dirty, official MTV “buzz clips”? If not, they might as well have been. As I remember, the video for the third track, “Sugar Kane”, off 1992’s Dirty, showed up on MTV only occasionally, late at night, but the first two got a fair share of airplay. Hits Are for Squares starts off with a series of undeniable “hits,” if having a hit means getting a video on MTV during the ‘90s “alternative rock” era. Since this is more or less a “hits” album, are the Starbucks-visiting music-buyers the squares? Is this a purposely “square” album cover, a contrast to the cool-ness of the rest of their catalogue? The title, though, seems a potential jab at the target audience: Hits Are for Squares. It looks like a Starbucks advertisement, though it could just as well be one for another commodity: a suit, a cell phone, an iPod, New York City, or about any other lifestyle product, pictured or not. But it doesn’t look like a Sonic Youth cover, even with the city’s presence. It’s a photo taken by a friend of the band, photographer Stefano Giovaninni, whose photos were used for the inner sleeve of the band’s 2002 album Murray Street. The city glimmers outside the window beside him. His coffee and cell phone sit silently on the table. A young man in a suit sits in a Starbucks store listening to music through white earbuds. The photo on the cover looks more Starbucks than Sonic Youth.
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