I guess I have to write something now, apologies in advance for the wall of text and rambling. This is by no means all-encompassing and several parts of this aren’t necessarily why people here shit on them. I’ll preface this by saying it’s very important to separate original run Billy from post-reunion Billy. But it’s generally some combination of:
They weren’t the cool kids and were guilty of being too commercially successful during peak 90s indie snobbery. Billy always openly had aspirations of being huge and that didn’t sit well with certain more fashionable indie bands (like Sonic Youth) and pompous journalists (like Everett True).
They were too artistic and ambitious to truly fit into the commercial rock world.
Billy’s music was very pretty and emotional, and as a result a certain component of the alt-rock fanbase (aka the people who didn’t realize In Bloom was about them) considered them to be too feminine (or “gay” as was said in the 90s).
They were held to an unreasonable standard in a changing industry. I can’t think of any other band that has to perpetually “beat” all of its past work in terms of critical praise, commercial appeal, and album sales, and is considered a failure / joke if they don’t do all of those things.
Billy is very outspoken. He’s said some nonsensical, infuriating things in recent years that he 100% deserves to get shit for, but in the 90s he was essentially villainized for being proud of his work and defensive when critics and peers unfairly dismissed it. He was human.
Lots of people are genuinely unaware of the many sides of the band, and view them simply as an aged alt-rock singles band that no longer has alt-rock singles.
People unfairly labeled Billy as a tyrant because he played all of the guitar and bass on Siamese Dream. He’s the band’s songwriter and lead guitarist (a legendary one at that) and was able to knock out takes much more quickly and correctly than the rest of the band. The same thing is done in many other bands and to more of an extreme (including by the nicest man in rock, Dave Grohl), but they don’t get the same venom or notoriety for it. (Also, Butch Vig pushed for Billy to handle everything too.)
Some of the previous things feed into this one, but the media has turned Billy into a cartoon character and it ultimately shapes people’s perception of him. Long before he said anything wrong, the narrative had been created that he was over the top crazy and an egomaniac. Continuing to make music past his commercial peak? Crazy! Dating or appearing in public with someone famous? Lost his mind! Having hobbies and successful businesses outside of music? What a lunatic!
All of these things sort of interact with each other and lead to a lot of undeserved backlash of different types from different groups of people.
I think the reason why there’s so much pushback on the Smashing Pumpkins adoration is that you’re in the perfect intersection of three factors:
They are a band that people know about and have heard of have opinions about. If I bang on about how much better Circle Takes the Square are than City of Caterpillar or Pg. 99 literally no-one is going to care.
The opinions of the SP fans are at such huge variance from the consensus that it’s easy to see why so many of the rest of us find them baffling. I don’t know anyone IRL or online apart from the 2 or three of you who think that most of the machina cuts are listenable let alone 5/5 works of genius. As far as Radiohead comparisons go… there are a variety of opinions about what their best work is but the only opinion I remember that’s so remarkably ‘out there’ is Bam’s (possibly trolling) opinion that King of limbs is their best.
The virulence and passion with which you guys pile into Billy’s corner does make it engaging to interact with I think. Music discussion with strong opinions is more interesting than ‘Yeah I thought it was ok’, ‘yeah I thought it was ok too’. I love the fact that the two ts are so into Smashing Pumpkins. The only time it grinds my gears is when there’s an implication that we’d all love Machina or Shiny and So Bright if only we could see past the ‘media campaign against Billy’. Nah m8s, we’re capable of listening and forming our own opinions, we just don’t think they’re any cop.
I think it depends on how you define consensus. Technically, the consensus for Radiohead is that Creep is their best song, you know? But among fans who have bought all of their albums, some combination of OK Computer, Kid A, and In Rainbows tends to float to the top.
For some reason with the Pumpkins though, the “consensus” seems to be defined as people who stopped during Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie, as opposed to people who bought every album.
I just watched the movie Batman & Robin, and that Pumpkins song from it plays over the credits (but then gets faded out for an RnB slow jam by R Kelly, so that’s aged well)
Yeah, that was such a strange choice, especially given the amount of great material from the Machina era sitting there. I could be making this up, but I think I may have read a Billy interview indicating Judas O was sort of a record label thing and he wasn’t involved too much in song selection? Either way, Soot and Stars is an all-time classic.
Are those lithographs all from the Machina era? Love the art of that album (for me, my favorite).
Still waiting on the re-issue, though he’s not using the same artist for it
I think I had a look at his website and they cost a pretty penny, must have set you back some.
I’m a bit disappointed that Billys not using the same artist for the reissue, as I really connected to it and was really looking forward to getting the vinyl and having it large size
That’s kinda annoying when you’re ordering from so far away.
Oh yeah, I’ll DM you about it.
From what he’s said before, he was going whole hog with the Machina reissue, but it’s died down. Complications with label or who owns the music again?
You’re right the recent ones don’t seem to have the same artistry to them as previous ones.
On my third way through the Corgi’s new solo album Cotillions. Think I quite like it. Some bits drag a little but overall an interesting new folksy approach for him. Always works well when he cushions his voice with backing vocals and there’s a fair bit of that. He’s letting his songwriting follow his weird old man muse which is good, though does lead to some ridiculous lyrics.
Just finished my third listen too, it’s getting significantly better each time. I think this could be a similar situation to the new album by The National, where it’s long and feels more soundtracky than what you’re used to from them and almost like they forgot the melodies, but with repeated listens the melodies reveal themselves. You can tell he really cared about this and was feeling inspired. I think he did a great job with the production too. Hopefully this gets him some positive attention from critics.
A few early standouts:
Hard Times (what a great chorus melody, feels very classic Pumpkins)
Cotillions
Colosseum
Neptulius
Ok, this album is great - I think it just became a top 5 candidate of the year for me and has surpassed Ogilala, and I wasn’t expecting either of those things at all after my first few listens. A lot of the songs that went past me are now among my favorites.
Rider and Apologia just clicked, and I have no idea how they hadn’t earlier. Great classic Corgan melodies.
