The Smashing Pumpkins

The Smashing Pumpkins Is An American Alternative Rock Band From Chicago. The Band Was Formed In 1988 By Billy Corgan And James Iha With Bassist D'arcy Wretzky And Drummer Jimmy Chamberlin Joining Shortly After. Despite Going Through Many Lineup Changes The Current Lineup Is Identical To The Original With The Exception Of Wretzky Who Would End Up Leaving The Band Just Before Their Initial Breakup In 2000. Disavowing The Punk Rock Roots Of Many Of Their Alt-Rock Contemporaries They Have A Diverse Densely Layered And Guitar-Heavy Sound Containing Elements Of Gothic Rock Heavy Metal Dream Pop Psychedelic Rock Progressive Rock Shoegazing And In Later Recordings Electronica. Corgan Is The Group's Primary Songwriter His Musical Ambitions And Cathartic Lyrics Have Shaped The Band's Albums And Songs Which Have Been Described As "anguished Bruised Reports From Billy Corgan's Nightmare-Land". The Smashing Pumpkins Broke Into The Musical Mainstream With Their Second Album 1993's Siamese Dream. The Group Built Its Audience With Extensive Touring And Their 1995 Follow-Up The Double Album Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness Debuted At Number One On The Billboard 200 Album Chart. 1998's Adore Would Just Barely Miss Out Peaking At Number Two. With 30 Million Albums Sold Worldwide The Smashing Pumpkins Were One Of The Most Commercially Successful And Critically Acclaimed Bands Of The 1990s. However Internal Fighting Drug Use And Diminishing Record Sales Led To A 2000 Break-Up. In 2006 Corgan And Chamberlin Reconvened To Record A New Smashing Pumpkins Album Zeitgeist. After Touring Throughout 2007 And 2008 With A Lineup Including New Guitarist Jeff Schroeder Chamberlin Left The Band In Early 2009. Later That Year Corgan Began A New Recording Series With A Rotating Lineup Of Musicians Entitled Teargarden By Kaleidyscope Which Encompassed The Release Of Stand-Alone Singles Compilation EP Releases And Two Full Albums That Also Fell Under The Project's Scope—Oceania In 2012 And Monuments To An Elegy In 2014. Chamberlin And Iha Officially Rejoined The Band In February 2018. The Reunited Lineup Has Released Three Albums So Far—Shiny And Oh So Bright Vol. 1 / LP No Past. No Future. No Sun. In November 2018 Cyr In November 2020 And ATUM In 2023. read less

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Billy Corgan

The choice to place a song like “Jellybelly” so early in the tracklist definitely makes a statement. The band seems to be communicating that, although “Tonight, Tonight” kicks it off, this is not a positive album full of hope. This is an unflinching journey into the human condition. After all, “Jellybelly” is arguably the heaviest track on the album (the contender being “Tales of a Scorched Earth”). With multiple guitars swirling around an unpredictable drum sequence, it closely resembles something more akin to heavy metal than to what most consider alternative rock. It does reign in the chaos for a more melodic and ordered chorus however, giving it an accessibility not normally found in harder songs that stray into the metal genre When pushed to pick a first single for the album, Corgan originally chose “Jellybelly.” As he explained to Alternative Nation, his initial first choice was based on his rebellious nature: ‘Bullet’ was the absolute obvious choice…which is kind of why I didn’t want it to be the first single. You know, in Pumpkinland, we don’t really like to do the obvious thing. I felt really close to ‘Jellybelly,’ because it sounds to me like a classic Pumpkins song from a third album. "A nihilist manifesto thrown like a pink hand grenade into an alley, I just went rode shotgun with the images until it sketched out nicely the gray of my suburban years. The original riff dates backwards into 1992, where we’d spasmodically play some concoction of this song if there was nothing else to jam on in a 3rd encore. To spice things up the machine gun bit was added to chop up the monotony on the back end of the blues. Once we flipped the script to bring the rat-tat-tat up front, this led to far more excitement. Sped up tremendously, a Teutonic maelstrom emerged, until there was a starship waiting without a single lyric or melody to accompany it into space." - Billy Corgan via 2012 Reissue Liner Notes Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.