Twenty years ago this past Friday, Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness was released by the alternative rock megastars Smashing Pumpkins. Billy Corgan, frontman of the band and certified musical genius and megalomaniac, stated prior to the its release that the 24-song, 2+ hour double album was destined to be "The Wall for Generation-X." While the music itself is hardly similar to Pink Floyd's magnum opus concept album, the influence of Mellon Collie more than comparable.
Myself, I first picked up Mellon Collie as a 16-year-old, really the perfect age for listening to this album. I had already fallen head over heels for Mellon Collie's predecessor, Siamese Dream, with its incredible musicianship and scope of influences. Mellon Collie, though, felt like an entire micro-universe all its own, where weird cat-headed children picked flowers in dark meadows and were frequently interrupted by an army of butterfly-winged bullets thundering down on them. The strange mix of piano pieces and gorgeous pre-post-rock guitar ballads with straight-up metal headbangers and face-melting guitar solos seemed to musically capture the wonder, beauty, heartache, and frustration of adolescence.
Now, almost a decade later for me, and two decades for its first listeners, the album remains a classic, just as relevant and powerful as ever. So, I thought I'd share my top 5 favorite Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness songs and why they still hold a special place in my heart, even after the angst and confusion of adolescence is behind me:
5. "To Forgive"
Even if you knew nothing about his parents' divorce or physically abusive stepmother, you could guess that Billy Corgan had a troubled childhood. This song is perhaps his best and most beautiful ode to that dark foundation of his life. The lyrics are wistful, perhaps deliberately attempting to replace the pain of his memories with cathartic recollections of being "a bastard son of a bastard son of a wild eyed child of the sun." Even still, there's no escaping the infinite sadness of lines like "I knew my loss before I even learned to speak. And all along I knew it was wrong. But I played along with my birthday song." The sincerity of this loss is undeniable and I found it very therapeutic for me as a teenager dealing with my own teenage heartache.
4. "Bodies"
Billy Corgan might have singlehandedly defined the emo/hardcore scream on this song as he tears his throat apart on the line, "No bodies ever knew, no bodies. No bodies felt like you, no bodies." And who among us, at some point in our adolescence, couldn't relate to the chorus and whine along "Love is suicide!"
We could talk about how "Bodies" powerfully represents the romantic disillusionment of youth, and how this theme ties into the rest of the songs on the album. But really, this is just a killer song that is fun to feel pissed off to.
We could talk about how "Bodies" powerfully represents the romantic disillusionment of youth, and how this theme ties into the rest of the songs on the album. But really, this is just a killer song that is fun to feel pissed off to.
3. "An Ode to No One"
When I first heard this song, my poor 16-year-old brain almost exploded. I had no idea you could do this sort of thing with guitars and drums. It's physically impossible for me to hear Jimmy Chamberlain's drumming on this album without trying to mimic him on my steering wheel or on my lap. Nor is it possible for me to hear Billy's blistering solo without noodling my fingers along with it in the air.
If anyone wants to argue that Jimmy Chamberlain was not the best drummer of the 90s, I humbly submit this song.
2. "1979"
The first Smashing Pumpkins song I ever heard, back in the 90s listening to my local "80s, 90s, and today" radio station in my mom's car. "1979" is arguably the most perfect pop song the Pumpkins ever wrote, which makes it standout in a brilliant way on an album filled with misfit songs.
There's something enchanting and timeless about this song. Wherever you are, as soon as you hear the opening riff with it's iconic little vocal flip (you know exactly what I'm talking about), you are transported back in time: to 1979, 1995, 2008, your adolescence, your childhood, wherever you were when you first heard it.
1. "Bullet With Butterfly Wings"
At the end of the day, this is really it. The song that defined the album, the band, the generation.
Billy's The Wall of Generation-X found its thesis statement in the iconic chorus of "Bullet With Butterfly Wings": Despite all the rage, the 2 hours of music, the successful career ending in a band imploded, the years of adolescence, we're still just rats in cages.
Billy doesn't provide any answers, here or throughout the album; indeed, it seems at almost 50-years-old, he's still trying to find his way out of the cage. What makes Mellon Collie important is that, for a moment or two, in 1995, Billy Corgan and his band of miscreants summed up perfectly life in this cage. It's ugly, it's beautiful, it's frustrating, it's profound. It's human. We've all been there and are there. It sucks and we're confused. But that's okay because we're in this thing together.
At the end of the day, this is really it. The song that defined the album, the band, the generation.
Billy's The Wall of Generation-X found its thesis statement in the iconic chorus of "Bullet With Butterfly Wings": Despite all the rage, the 2 hours of music, the successful career ending in a band imploded, the years of adolescence, we're still just rats in cages.
Billy doesn't provide any answers, here or throughout the album; indeed, it seems at almost 50-years-old, he's still trying to find his way out of the cage. What makes Mellon Collie important is that, for a moment or two, in 1995, Billy Corgan and his band of miscreants summed up perfectly life in this cage. It's ugly, it's beautiful, it's frustrating, it's profound. It's human. We've all been there and are there. It sucks and we're confused. But that's okay because we're in this thing together.
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