This was the Pumpkins' best album. The previous one, Siamese Dream (1993), is a close second and although it might contain my all time favorite song of theirs (Mayonaise), nothing the Smashing Pumpkins recorded before or since can beat the epic double Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness.
Best known for its many hit singles (Tonight, Tonight, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Thirty-Three, Zero and 1979), Mellon Collie... is possibly the most diverse SP album with songs ranging from angry, screamy noise fests (Jellybelly, Tales Of A Scorched Earth, Fuck You (An Ode to No One)), pretty lullabies (By Starlight, To Forgive), and just plain weirdness (Cupid De Locke).
After this masterpiece the band fired drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, recorded the Depeche Mode-worshipping dung piñata Adore and they have't been listenable since. Apart from the odd track here and there (The Everlasting Gaze is brilliant for example), everything they (read: Billy Corgan) has done since 1995 is useless.
Just as useless as Corgan's solo albums, the Zwan debacle and the abominable Smashing Pumpkins "reunion". What a wanker.
But every wanker gets his one moment in the sun, and for Billy Corgan that moment was Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness.
(mp3) The Smashing Pumpkins - Tonight, tonight
(mp3) The Smashing Pumpkins - Tales of a scorched earth
(mp3) The Smashing Pumpkins - In the arms of sleep (recommended)
Buy Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness @ Amazon.com.
The video for Tonight, Tonight:
8 comments:
I'm with you on Mayonaise, it's my favourite too. I seen them twice and they didn't play it either time. Fucking dome head.
So no Siamese Dream in this countdown? I would put it in over Mellon Collie as it's a better track-for-track album. Ah well
Kudos on the site!
Remember when Billy Corgan had hair? Yeah, I was watching "Bullet..." on YouTube.
When he had the long hair he looked like Geena Davis.
can't listen to them anymore.
Care to elaborate, Neil?
BIts of this album are in my pod at the moment! Haven't listened in a while actually due to the Corgan machinations that you talk about in your post, but nice memories are coming back!
Nice to see someone favour this before SD. I fucking love it. The whole album.
I was lucky to hear Mayonaise in Sthlm, april 1996. At the end of the show. I almost wept.
Yeah this was a great album, but it would have been way better if they trimmed the fat and compressed all the good tracks onto one single album. We'd be talking a contender for top 10 albums of all tie if that was the case.
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