Everything changed.

Nicolás Buenos Aires, AR

My mom made me listen to Tonight, tonight (on the radio) one morning before school. I was 12, and a “this is it” feeling took over me. That weekend we went to the record store and I got my copy of Mellon Collie… and everything changed. That band, and that album, that was MY thing. And I’ve loved them both ever since.

“We Will Never Be the Same…”

Aaron Archual Roanoke, VA, US

At age 12, by the pool with family, I heard 1979. I looked at the cover, and that mysterious maiden in the stars drew me in. ASAP, I put on the whole album. When I first heard “Tonight Tonight”, it made me pick up the guitar, want to make something new for the first time, and changed me forever.

Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness Tour

Hillary Gordon US

My best friends and me in 10th grade, late night, after seeing The Smashing Pumpkins for the very first time in Phoenix, Arizona. We bonded over that album and would see The Pumpkins many more times in our lives (together and apart.) I was 15 in this photo- and my life had just been changed forever. 

Just in time

Matías Imbrogno Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, AR

I can’t begin to describe how this album makes me feel. It came to me in a really tough part of my life: I was about to start my university studies, and I had to face a new world full of new people all by myself. I wasn’t gonna be easy,  but music was always there for me. That’s when I first fully listened to MCIS… I recall being left speechless for some time. As the piece of art it is, it created a strong bond with me that will live on forever. I have my ups and downs, but thanks to your music, I’ll always have another reason to get up and fight.

A mere “thank you” falls short. Keep up the good work 💪🏻

A melancholic and touching journey

Manuel Donato Catanzaro, CZ, IT

I’ve always been a reflective and melancholic soul, constantly searching for something that could have expressed my inner feelings:  I found this lifeline in MCIS, more an experience than simply a music album, capable of bringing back memories of better and brighter times and translating them into new strength to deal with everyday life and its challenges.
Also, I had the pleasure to attend your Bologna concert in October 2018, finally achieving my dream of listening to your music live: what a better occasion to celebrate this immortal masterpiece?

First CD I Ever Bought

Mac Grambauer Chicago, US

Mellon Collie was the first CD I ever bought myself. I was ten years old and “Tonight Tonight” was all over the radio (93XRT). I loved it. And confined to my quiet, forest preserve-bordered northwest corner of the city, I marveled at the reality of the band on the radio playing that song being from here. The same place I was from.

I saved up allowance so I could go up to the Best Buy with my Dad and buy the (double!) CD. I didn’t even have a CD player yet. I listened to it on an old “portable” CD player of my Dad’s. It weighed about three pounds and was caged in a metal case that made it look like a cinder block and it only wouldn’t skip if it sat on the floor under the end table in the corner of the living room. So I crawled under the table and listened to Mellon Collie. I got a CD
player that Christmas and my repeat listens moved to my bedroom and continued for months. I stared at the booklet with the “funny animal art” and the “star lady” on the cover. I read and re-read the lyric book. It was my favorite CD. The Smashing Pumpkins were my favorite band. And “Tonight Tonight” was my favorite song.

The favorite CD and favorite band didn’t change, but over the following years the favorite song did. As other albums came into my life in the final years of elementary school, Mellon Collie became less frequent in the rotation, but still “Zero” and “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” became more prominent in my life soundtrack. As I transitioned from my familiar elementary school into the disorienting jungle of high school, “The world is a vampire” and the wistful longing invoked by “1979” took on a new significance.

As my freshman year dragged on I found myself turning more and more to Mellon Collie, my old companion. I didn’t know it then, but that move to high school triggered my first bout with depression. I didn’t know what was wrong with me or what to do about it, and it would be quite some time before that first bout would dissipate. In the meantime, in the absence of my old friends, amidst increasing
arguments with my Mom, and a new aloofness towards my Dad that I seemingly couldn’t control, Mellon Collie was who I turned to. I returned to repeat listens and hours spent staring at the lyrics. At one point, instead of writing a science report, I picked out clip art and fonts for each of the 28 songs and typed them out according to how Billy sang them (the line breaks in the lyric books didn’t quite match). I taped each sheet up in border around the top of my bedroom walls and got a D in biology, continuing my epic descent from straight A student to misanthropic fuck up and setting off a bomb in my relationship with my Mother.

Still, it helped me. That ring of lyrics encircling me in my room tethered me to myself. Lost as I was, they were a lighthouse beam I could focus on in the dark. And “To Forgive” and Thirty-Three” captured all the feelings I couldn’t recognize, let alone express.

But none of them, beautiful, dependable friends that they were, gave me the roots that “Galapogos” did.

It was late evening in one of the cold months—late Fall or early Winter. I was sitting on my bed with the annoyingly bright lamp on and the door closed over to the noise of the kitchen. “Galapogos” was playing. And as it played I found myself standing up on my bed, turning to where the lyric sheet was taped on my wall. And it was like the sun hitting you in the face when you emerge from an unlit basement. It was painful and soothing and new, but had been there
forever, and suddenly “blanket skies” were safety and warmth and it was “funny how we pretend we’re still a child” and there was no need to deny pain or change or anything else. And even if you were a fool, someone was here with you.

Many years, bands, albums, songs later, and “Galapogos” is the only one that has ever wrapped me up in itself like that. It became and remains my favorite Pumpkins song. A few years after that night, my Dad came out from hanging shelves in my room asking if he could put on my Pumpkins CD. He was curious about a song whose lyrics had caught his attention. “Galapogos.” If ever I doubted I’m my father’s daughter.

I still have my first CD and the vinyl re-issue is a treasured piece of my record collection. And even if I sometimes go years without listening to it, I still know all the words to all the songs on Mellon Collie.

Thanks, Pumpkins. 

Great songs

Gary Enfield CT , US

I listened and lived this album, love, lonely, graceful, and crazy 

Forgot to add the pic!

Martin S Beaumont, AB, CA

Forgot to add this earlier (aka couldn’t find it, then found it) the James hair! But frizzy and curly 🙂

Mellon Collie & The Infinite Phonebill

Phil Shaw Liverpool, GB

Christmas ‘95. Lifting my Walkman to the mouthpiece of our old rotary dial phone, I hit play. At either end of the line my best friend Gareth and I listened for the first time, aghast at the power and brutality, delicacy and vulnerability, breadth and width. We were 12. The phone bill was much more!

Tape Deck at the Lake

Jason Gibson Sherman, TX, US

One day I heard Zero on the radio. I was hooked. I was at the lake trying to hook up with this girl. She had no interest so, pouting I went and sat in my car and jammed MCIS . I was blown away. 

Porcelina

Habib Baudry Donzère, FR

Une claque sonore , un son unique et prenant, les 2 cd l’on accompagné et font voyager sur plusieurs sentiments, porcelina , très grand…bravo le groupe

Soundtrack to life.

Warren Livingston Lansing, MI, US

For a period of a few years  entering adulthood I had experienced the bitter sting of isolation to the lift of infatuation and falling in love to the freefall of its eventual heartbreak and a bitter close to me death. This album got me through many tear filled frustrating days and nights. 

When I only came out at night

Harry Heath Stockholm, SE

I went through a rough patch at uni, falling out of rhythm with the world and sleeping all day. I used to wander the empty streets and parks at night with headphones on playing Mellon Collie. Though things were bad, it was immensely peaceful and empowering.  Now I only feel great nostalgia for those times where I only came out at night.

Disappearing CD

Bradley Hill Brisbane, Queensland, AU

There was this girl I really liked and I use to play MCIS to her at her house and in her car while we drove around aimlessly. One day her CD played destroyed the first CD of the album and a few weeks latter she bought me a new one and went for a drive in her car listing to it. That’s when I knew she was the one for me, all I really needed. Married now for nearly 9 years

Always There

Barry CARSHALTON, GB

I vividly remember buying MCIS on the day it came out. I didn’t recognise at the time how important it would be. It started out as the sound track of focus for my school exams. It became the soundtrack of getting ready to go out at University. It became the soundtrack of failure when I couldn’t get a job. It became the soundtrack of success when that job came along. Now im old it is the soundtrack of working late. The moment everyone else leaves and I’m left on my own to create things, I immediately hit play. It soothes the angry itch at the back of my head that wonders why I’m still in the office at 8 o’clock at night and helps me to go to the creative place inside my mind that gets the job done. Part of it is the beautiful music. Part of it is the emotional connection that has lasted 25 years and transcends the music. I love this album. Thank you Smashing Pumpkins.

Distant Ecstasy

Fletcher Oakes Catonsville Maryland, US

This album changed me forever with how it advanced my dreams. This album and all the pumpkins music gives me a sense of anemoia I can’t describe. Whenever I would listen I would be taken to a place I never knew but longed for. It was indescribable. I’m taken back to my days with my friends the good times where life was pure ecstasy. It is the closest I have ever felt to God.This album inspired me to pursue my lifelong dream of being a movie director and writer. The writing and sounds of this album and every other SP project shaped the entire zeitgeist and meaning of my film ideas. Thank you for making this masterpiece of an album and sparking my new film goals.You’re forever to me.

The 2 month wait

Ray Paice St Albans, Hertfordshire , GB

Reading 1995 – my first festival (I was 17) , and hearing those Mellon collie songs for the first time was beyond exciting. Had to wait 2 months for the album to come out, I’d never been as exited or anticipated an album more. 

THE BEST ALBUM EVER

PABLO J. Quito, UIO, EC

This is my favorite album ever, I was 18 and used to listen it whit my brother who was almost 14yo. MCIS has a perfect song for each moment, it’s timeless m/

The best Christmas present ever!

Rodney Henderson Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, GB

It seems a bit weird, but I got Mellon Collie for Christmas 1998 after getting into the band in my early teens after the release of Adore. 

Of course, I knew some of the tracks that had been released as singles, but Mellon Collie was the first album I really did a deep dive into as my musical tastes were forming.

Christmas dinner at my family home has never experienced another soundtrack quite like 98 again! Our family tradition is to get albums for Christmas and we would load them into our 6 CD autochanger stereo (A real relic of the past now) and that would be the musical accompaniment to our food.

The first couple of tracks seemed to be well accepted by my family, but when “Jellybelly” came on unfortunately we moved on to my sister’s album of choice.

MCIS has become one of my favourite albums and has had a huge influence on me as I started writing and playing music. Most bands would probably consider either disc as the pinnacle of their creative output, but The Smashing Pumpkins aren’t most bands.

I’ll leave here the cover version my band did of “Bodies”; my favourite track on the album, with Porcelina a close second.

Thank you, SP. I am sure I am just one of a countless amount of music fans that have been shaped by your amazing work!

If you’re giving in, then you’re giving up

Mattie Denver, co, US

I remember being about 9 and hearing 1979 for the first time. I grew up in a fairly conservative household and my mother didn’t like me listening to mainstream music. All of the Rock / alternative / grunge bands of the early and mid 90s I had to listen to on the radio at night and record songs on a cassette tape. I remember hearing Billy corgan’s voice and thinking “he sounds so weird but I absolutely love it”. I got Melancholy and the infinite sadness for my 10th birthday and listened to it relentlessly.  Smashing pumpkins became the soundtrack to my moody teen years, painting in my room, reading, driving around. I have seen them in Boulder in 2000, at Red Rocks in 2016 and in Denver in 2018. Every time was phenomenal and buried me beneath a spectral tidal wave of sound. I am a middle-aged mom who still listens to Smashing Pumpkins while cleaning my house. 

Melancolía & tristeza infinita

Daniel Mosquera Lima, Lima, PE

I’ve got two version of MCIS, in CD and cassette, they are part of my musical treasure. I discovered MCIS in 96 ,when someone lent me it , and I listened again and again, especially at night, in solitude and privacy of my room. Now, listen it still continius be a travel, a special travel through sinuous melodies.Thanks for all!

Cassette Daze

M. Cartozzo Houma, LA , US

I first heard the Pumpkins back in the cassette days. It was one morning at my cousin’s house. We were in his mom’s car. He popped in the cassette and put on “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” and I’ve been a fan ever since. I still have my the world is a vampire shirt from the 90s. 

I knew the distance to the sun…

Ryan Los Angeles, US

During the lowest point of my life, Muzzle assured me that I’m okay and everything will be okay. This album has saved me physically once, and spiritually countless times. There is nothing better for the soul or the ears than MCIS. I hope that many generations will discover this music because it may save them as well. 

I Peel no feign

Rohan Ford Perth, Western Australia, AU

The tour for Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness came to our most isolated city, Perth in 1996. That day my best friend and I were on the train, drawing ‘SP’ love hearts on each other, absolutely livid as we neared the entertainment centre. Up against the front bar, a girl was pulled vertically out as she passed out from the sheer pressure of the crowd in anticipation.. as the band emerged, a respectful gap ensued, allowing amongst crowd surfings and joint rollings; a couple seemingly ‘at one’ in the midst of the frenzy. The speakers were busted like my ears by the end, but the pumpkins transcended all. ‘I peel no feign’ Billy’s spontaneous adaption of ‘Silverfuck’, was just gold. I’d emerged from a rough upbringing into a wonderful group of friends with whom I shared this music. Truly incredible experiences & memories gifted at the peak of my youth.

Dash to Brixton

Simon London, GB

Jumping on a 5 a.m. coach to London on a whim to go to the Brixton show, I got the very last ticket at the box office! Glasses broke, had to leave early, but still…

Transition

Lyola Rowe San Anselmo, CA, US

Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness is the soundtrack to my teenage years, as it is for many. I moved to the US from Ukraine as a young adult in the ’90s and poetry of MCIS taught me to FEEL in English. I took time to translate, break down, and interpret MCIS lyrics for myself to the extent that I’ve never done with any other foreign text before. Thank you for this.