Smashing Pumpkins

It's not always easy to distinguish a sunrise from a sunset. Billy Corgan often wondered, in that period at the start of the '90s, whether the project he'd poured so much energy into was finally taking off or had reached the end of the road. After a dazzling debut and a respectable fanbase already in place, the Smashing Pumpkins had signed to a major label. And yet the band's fragile internal balance was dramatically coming apart at the seams. Every member was going through a personal crisis that was undermining the very stability of a musical project that had barely gotten off the ground.

Drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, by then fully in the grip of drug addiction, was giving everyone good reason to worry about his health. Guitarist James Iha and bassist D'Arcy Wretzky, previously involved in a turbulent romantic relationship, had decided to split, with inevitable fallout for their working relationship. And then there was him, the band's undisputed leader, who could no longer bear the enormous weight of responsibility on his shoulders and had just ended things with his longtime girlfriend. Anxiety had shut down his songwriting abilities, and suicidal thoughts loomed in his mind. Everyone knew the stakes were enormous: if the record failed to meet expectations, there would probably be no coming back for the Illinois pumpkins.

This blend of anger, fear of failure and a will to prove themselves would prove to be extremely fertile ground for shaping their second record, "Siamese Dream", released in the summer of 1993. The turning point came on an otherwise ordinary day in the autumn of the previous year. Corgan was struggling to revive his creative spark, even turning to psychotherapy for support. In a moment of deep despair, he imagined the last day of a would-be suicide, happy at the thought of never having to live through another one.

Today is the greatest

Day I've ever known

Can't live for tomorrow

Tomorrow’s much too long

I’ll burn my eyes out

Before I get out

Over the following months he would refine what he himself sarcastically called his personal ode to suicide, above all adding the now-famous guitar riff that opens the track. The melodic structure of "Today" was, in any case, written in a matter of hours in one sitting, and co-producer Butch Vig immediately pegged it as a surefire hit. He saw clearly, because this song, with its highly catchy alternative style, in which harmonious sections alternate with more forceful passages built on layered guitars, would go on to catapult the Chicago band into the musical mainstream. The video, in heavy rotation on MTV, showing the American singer in the unlikely guise of an ice-cream vendor wandering the desert with his truck, is by now part of the basic toolkit for understanding '90s pop culture.

It wasn't chosen as the lead single because Corgan, after an exhausting tug-of-war with the label, preferred to go with the explosive "Cherub Rock". The track, starting from its very title, can be considered a sort of stylistic manifesto for Smashing Pumpkins, reflecting their desire to fuse heavy rock influences with angelic, irresistible hooks. The idea was clearly to escape easy comparisons to a new Nirvana. Despite working with the producer of "Nevermind" and winning the admiration of Pearl Jam, who had brought Smashing Pumpkins on as their opening act during the tour for their debut album, the sound of the four American musicians was in fact quite far removed from the grunge rock standards that were dominating the scene at the time. The whirlwind drumming and sharp guitar breaks recall '80s prog rock (Rush), but the dark bass lines and the frequent pursuit of layered, stacked sounds show how European shoegaze and noise influences were just as important to the band.

In truth, Butch Vig tried to keep reverb and echo to a minimum — elements that had been very much present on the earlier "Gish" — favoring a drier, more accessible sound. From this angle, "Siamese Dream" pulls the Chicago four-piece somewhat away from bands like My Bloody Valentine, for whom they had never hidden their boundless admiration. Certainly, the themes of their lyrics — an expression of social anger and widespread malaise — along with their ability to never lose sight of melody even amid dissonance and vibrating noise, also mark grunge out as a major influence on the way they played. One of the undeniable merits of "Siamese Dream" was precisely that of steering Corgan and his bandmates' talent toward a personal, recognizable style with a clearly defined aesthetic.

The album was recorded in great haste, with grueling sessions running up to sixteen hours a day to make up for the considerable delays the band had racked up against their deadlines. Having left behind the creative block that had gripped him, Corgan selected further tracks to record and personally took it upon himself (out of perfectionism, as well as the real difficulties the band was going through) to record numerous guitar and bass parts in place of their usual players.

It's home to some of Smashing Pumpkins' most famous ballads. Anger, this time directed outward, is at the heart of "Disarm", another huge hit from the album that, according to a later interview, was written on the very same day as "Today". In this song, the frontman lashes out furiously at his family, whom he blames for neglecting him. Disarmed, as we all are by our own feelings, Corgan crafts a ballad he would try to chase again many times in the years that followed, and one that remains among the best-known tracks in the American band's catalogue. Built on a deceptively simple guitar arpeggio, with overdubbed church bells and strings in the background, its strength lies in the unusual pairing of hope-laden music with furious, direct, deeply emotional lyrics. Needless to say, the video for this song was also extremely well received, earning the band their first MTV Music Award nomination.

The trajectory of "Mayonaise" is remarkable: despite receiving no dedicated promotion or official video, it quickly became one of the most iconic songs of an entire generation. In an era still dominated by cassette tapes, countless fans wore out their Bics rewinding the tape again and again to hear a Corgan finally at peace with himself sing:

No more promise, no more sorrow

No longer will I follow

Can anybody hear me?

I just want to be me

"Mayonaise" was one of two tracks on which guitarist James Iha also had a hand in the songwriting. Cut from a very different cloth is the other track, "Soma", further embellished by a cameo from Mike Mills on piano. It opens with dreamy, psychedelic atmospheres, but is torn open halfway through by the eruption of all the heavy artillery the Chicago band has at its disposal, including the finest Stratocaster tone, from which a sublime guitar solo comes rattling out.

Probably the album's finest moments are exactly these islands where the battered Pumpkins manage to strike a perfect balance between the impetuous, angry heavy-rock components and the melancholy, sugary atmospheres that dominate elsewhere ("Luna", "Sweet Sweet", "Spaceboy"). Impossible not to mention, in this regard, the wonderful "Hummer", not the easiest listen for a distracted ear given its lack of a chorus, but absolutely unmissable for its intricate dynamics, alternating tempo changes and dizzying solos. Catchier, but with an equally complex structure, is "Geek U.S.A.". The track, placed right at the album's centre, reworks and rearranges a song from their archive and stands out for Chamberlin's extraordinary work, a genuine pulsing engine that, moving at full speed, drags the rest of the band into vertiginous rhythms, until the guitars end up crashing into one another. Corgan's rasping voice briefly takes over and the music slows into a sea of distortion, but the drums climb back up again, accompanying the guitar through an unforgettable section that regularly turns up on lists of the greatest guitar solos in rock history.

The drums again take centre stage on the rock-solid "Quiet" and on the sprawling hardcore march "Silverfuck", but in both cases they aren't backed by riffs and transitions of equal interest.

For their last single, Smashing Pumpkins chose "Rocket", a track that slides confidently into a glam and shoegaze sheen that brings it closer to the raw style of "Gish". Even though, in the accompanying video, the four of them have fun dressing up as ancient octogenarians, the music on offer doesn't seem to have been touched by time at all. "I miss everything I'll never be", sings Corgan in a line that perfectly captures that sense of melancholy so common among the teenagers of that generation, who had left behind the previous decade's glittering sheen and were anxiously awaiting the new millennium. The loss of ideologies and the disillusionment hadn't dented the desire for connection, for dreaming in unison.

The music of Smashing Pumpkins would soon reach its zenith, but "Siamese Dream", beyond its undeniable musical merits, remains, for those who experienced it back then, a treasure chest brimming with nostalgia. Like those old home movies someone occasionally digs out, every listen reminds us of who we were and where we've been.

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18/02/2026