Happy Birthday, Billy.

There was a time when I was probably one of the most devoted Smashing Pumpkins fans in Colombia. I collected almost your entire catalog. I grew up listening to those endless layers of sound you created — guitars that felt like atmospheres, melodies suspended somewhere between fragility and epic intensity. A universe where a mellotron, analog synths, and raw emotion could coexist.

I’m a Pisces too, so maybe that’s why your music always felt like it was speaking from another dimension — melancholic, cosmic, deeply honest. You changed the way I understood contemporary rock and pop. You showed me that sensitivity could be powerful.

When you first came to Colombia, I made this video with a friend while working for a magazine. We ended up talking about the moon, the music industry, and the future of rock. Years later, I realized something: you weren’t being pessimistic — you were simply seeing further ahead than the rest of us.

Maybe rock didn’t die; maybe it just transformed. But here we are, still celebrating something more important — your music keeps being born every time someone discovers it for the first time.

Thank you for the noise, the beauty, and the vision.

Happy Birthday — and thank you for continuing to inspire across generations.

— CAMO. Bogotá. Colombia