Glow stick bullet, caught
Omar Hijaz Brookline, MA, US
It was the 1996 MCIS tour at the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia. Packed arena, great music and crowd. Except for one dude. I remember this perfectly because it happened right in the middle of Bullet with Butterfly Wings, during the part where it goes quiet and BC is playing “despite…” without distortion. The crowd is fully engaged and all of a sudden a green glow stick goes shooting from the middle section of the floor and right Billy. What happened next blew me away. He catches the glow stick mid-guitar-plucking, with cat-like reflexes. The song stops. BC pinpoints the dude in the crowd, gets crew to shine a spotlight on them, and has them kicked out of the show, all in less then a minute. The crowd cheered loudly with the justice that had just been served. It was the most rock and roll thing I’d ever seen. Then, without missing a beat, Jimmy, James, D’arcy, and Billy continue where Bullet left off and with an intensity to match what had just happened.
Thanks for the music and favorite song
Ricardo Muñoz R. MX
I am from Mexico, his music accompanied my childhood, adolescence and my present adult life in happy, sad, rare and exciting moments. So every time his music plays, many memories come to me. I was 12 years old and Mellon Collie was a journey of emotions, it contains "Tonight, Tonight" my favorite song of all the music I listen to, it makes my skin crawl to this day, I had the opportunity to enjoy it live at his concert in Guadalajara 2008. It was a moment I will never forget. Thanks for the music.
The greatest album in history
Matthew Dallas, US
Lyrically, musically, structurally, MCIS and The Aeroplane Flies High counterpart are the greatest works of art I’ve ever heard. It’s a sublime, inspired masterpiece and speaks to me even now as I approach middle age. Even when my brother and I didn’t speak to each other for 12 years, whenever SP came to town we would talk.
Discovering SP
Macy Chamberlain Reading, PA, US
I was 17, now I’m 18. Around January/February, I heard Tonight Tonight and 1979 on the radio and added them to my Spotify. After loving those two songs, I delved further into their music. Something about it just scratches my soul— there’s a song for every mood, situation, or thought I have. Plus, it’s just pure art. My parents went to college in the 90s, so I’ve been around that era of music my whole life, and it’s great to share an interest in something from “their time”. My dad and I both play guitar, and I love to show him all the SP songs I’ve learned . Even though it’s only been a few months, I have a lot to thank SP for. I’ve had a deep love for music all my life, and they’re one of the groups I’ve clicked the most with. They’ve seen me through the crazy ups and downs of this new chapter in my life, and I’m so grateful that when I look back, they’ll be on the soundtrack of it!
Didn’t mean to write a novel and this definitely sounds cliche, but it’s just the truth!!
Best friend
Pedro Funchal, Madeira, PT
My dad bought this album because of the first track, and it became my all time favorite. I was 9y old, it was there all along my youth, a true friend, a reminder that I wasn’t alone. And that is what SP means to me, to my life, that is ok to be different, that the right thing to do is to be true to yourself. And that someday someone will love you for that. It kept me going through the hard times, from the loneliness of small towns, throught the doubts of growing up. Listening to it always feel like home. And that the band is playing just for me, by my side. This is how special and great this album is.
Admission day
Pavel Solís Lima, PE
So many things to say… At dawn on a winter day in 1998, I set my alarm and listened to the first two: MCIS and Tonight. I was 16 and that day I was going to enter university (in Peru we have entrance exams). I hope my loved ones put the day of my funeral: Farewell and Goodnight. This record goes like this with my life. Thanks to you for those past and future memories.
Dawn To Dusk
Bimo P Bandung, ID
Almost a full year of listening to SP’s albums. and MCIS which gave me chills. I think this album is very heavy and I really like it. I don’t know what else to say, maybe “you know you’re never sure, but you’re sure you could be right if you held yourself up to the light.”
Thank you.
Still don’t own a legit physical copy of this after 25 years
AJ Sharma CA
I remember when this album came out when I was in grade 8. I remember wanting the double LP but not having the money or a CD player for it so I spent all of my time hoping it would come up on the radio or hoping it would come up on Much Music. I managed to snag some of the MP3’s from a BBS at the time but the idea of downloading a whole album at that time was impossible. Someone had decided to title one of the tracks “the world is a vampire” and I went around calling it that much to the ridicule of my friends.
A comfort in the dark
Patrick Chaffin Lafayette, IN, US
Mellon Collie was the first album that actually hit me on an
emotional level. I remember being so sad about moving across the state right
before high school in ’98, and laying on the floor listening to ‘Here is No
Why’ at max volume. It was the only thing to finally bring a feeling of peace
and comfort.
Rat in a Cage
Michael Dublin, IE
I was 14,hanging out in my best friends bedroom,talking about girls and other nonsense…On the telly in the background I see a singer in silver trousers and a band rocking in a muddy quarry. I instantly sit up and take notice.I seek out the album next day.Little did I know I had found my absolute favourite band.25 years later my friend is gone but the music and the memory it holds lives on.
Freshly Squeezed
Myles Rotherham, GB
I went on work experience when I was 14, during the school year. I had a day shadowing a sales rep, who was originally from New Zealand. We got talking about music and he said how amazing Smashing Pumpkins and MCIS, in particular, is. A month later, I woke up early for school and a TV show called Freshly Squeezed was playing the video for ‘Tonight, Tonight’. I was captured. I purchased the album and have been in love ever since!
Thank you for the memories…
Sarah Sydney, AU
This album is like the soundtrack of my youth. Every time I play it, it whisks me back to my home town and all the memories of the mischief I would get up to with my friends comes flooding back. 1979 is my absolute favourite song from the album, I actually cry every time I hear it because it brings back so many memories of my childhood & my Mum (who has now sadly passed). I am so grateful for the Smashing Pumpkins, each album perfectly represents each stage of my life but MCIS will always have a special place in my heart.
The impossible is possible
Adam Augusta, GA, US
Two bands stick out in my memory as acts whose songs felt channeled and not simply performed: The Beatles and The Smashing Pumpkins. To this day (even with my own Billy Corgan model Reverend guitar), I think of “BWBW,” “1979,” “Zero,” “Tonight, Tonight,” and the ethereal “Thirty-Three” as transcendent singles that the Pumpkins revealed to the world. “Tonight, Tonight” still moves me to great emotions–happiness, melancholia, surprise, peace, and of course love. Long may MCIS reign as a crowning achievement of 90s music!
Blissful Nostalgia
Alexa Harkness Tallahassee, US
I discovered The Smashing Pumpkins my freshman year of high school. It was perfect timing. I had always carried this strange feeling around with me like a sad, yet blissful nostalgia. Nostalgia for a time that I didn’t really know. When I first heard this album, I connected with it so deeply because it perfectly captured this feeling. It was the most beautiful, psychedelic, and enraged piece of art my ears had ever witnessed. I was hooked. The song X.Y.U. stole my heart from the moment I heard it, and to this day I have heard nothing like it. The whole album is so raw and powerful, not to mention the album art is incredibly immersive. The Tonight, Tonight music video is still the most dope I have ever seen, and I resonate with it so deeply. I have never resonated more with a particular aesthetic in my life. Smashing Pumpkins, you were the soundtrack to my coming of age, to my wonderful and terrible discoveries about life and love…to car and train and plane rides that seemed to go on forever. I have more memories with you than I can count, and I want to thank you for giving me hope in a time of my life that seemed hopeless. Hearing the lyric, “Intoxicated with the madness/ I’m in love with my sadness” when I was 14 or 15 is when I first realized what having depression truly meant, and subsequently helped me cope with what I was feeling. There will never be another band with the same sense of phantasmagoria as The Smashing Pumpkins. Whenever I want to connect to that inexplicable feeling deep inside myself, I listen to this album. I will forever cherish your brilliance <3
Thanks for making 8th grade, and most of high school bearable
Ryan Balcom Chapel Hill, NC, US
My 90’s alt-rock phase entered my life in 8th grade. As a confused, angsty kid, a lot of it really touched me, but no band did more than the Smashing Pumpkins. They’re my favorite band still, and I dived into Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and made it the soundtrack of my 8th grade year, and helped me so damn much to cope with my hormones and complex feelings. 8th grade was spent with me being harassed by assholes, having not great friends, and of course, bad and futile attempts to impress/attract girls- and the Pumpkins, and especially Mellon Collie, made it way more bearable. 1979 takes me right back to 8th grade- school sucked, but I still felt young and alive, and the Smashing Pumpkins made the worst of it so much more bearable.
Infinite Light
Tyler Denver, CO, US
Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness is truly my favorite album possibly ever. I was introduced to the band by my mother, who saw SP perform at a bar in Chicago in the 90s. I can’t properly describe the amazing effect that this music has had on me, and Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness has changed my life and helped me through so much.
Hard Memories
Shannon B Lexington, KY, US
I played the song “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” at my first wife’s funeral. This was her favorite album and favorite band. It’s still a tough one to hear.
Jaw Dropping Album
Paul Los Angeles, CA, US
I had been a fan for many years prior, but I will never forget that first listen to Mellon Collie. My 16 year old jaw just dropped in stunned admiration. It was/is an album that has helped define so much of my life, and I’m incredibly grateful it was given to the world.
My memory
Georgia Birmingham , GB
This album was introduced to me by a friend who now means a lot to me. We skate together and the songs in this album always remind me of him
Brother
Jack Manchester, GB
So I was 4 (I think, born in 1991) and my eldest brother was into this band to which my child mind could repeat the full title of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and I would always request, “We Only Come Out at Night” (born goth) and my memories of that song, along with “Beautiful” I hold close to my heart.
The Mystery
Christopher Chicago, US
I grew up outside Chicago and my older brother had a wall-sized MCIS poster that he’d picked up in NYC. Of all the totems in the home this image stuck me as grandiose, otherworldly, and unlike anything I’d been exposed to. The music matched this feeling perfectly and my world grew much larger around this music.
Teenager happiness! Thanks God!
Leandro Vitta de Lima Santos SP , BR
Smashing pumpkins with Mellon Collie… album was inside my head day after day in that moment (1995). During my teen ages in these picture I always have been waiting for the next meeting between us. Friends, dreams, laughs and everything else for a real teen group. We didnt know the real responsabilites. The main music for me 1979 the year that I was born and another coincidence I live at 33 flat nowadays (after my divorce) and that teen time too. Thanks God for this magical moments in my life. I got the picture added ! Thanks Smashing pumpkins for your work. Music fill our memory and complete our soul !!!!
Musically Inspiring
Phil Muskegon, MI, US
Jimmy’s drums on Bullet, and the rest of the album, inspired me to become a drummer. 20 years later I still play.
Tonight, Tonight
Sarah Carter Alanson, MI, US
I had heard the SP name around school, but was a pop music diehard. Then my world of music shifted the day I saw the Tonight, Tonight video on MTV. What was this soul moving sound? A little rock and a little alternative, and those strings?! The next day I went to the record store and grabbed MCIS. That one song led me to the one album that changed my music world forever.
Power of SP
Ben carkhuff Colona, il, US
I grew up listening and remember seeing videos like landslide and today. Then MCIS I have owned every version loved all the b sides. Then I started a family. My boy is remy corgan and my youngest is porcelina echo. The influence that album had on me help drown out so much
The Soundtrack of my Life
Stephanie Bristol, VA, US
My best friend first turned me on to the Pumpkins when we were in college. The soundtrack of our friendship is made up primarily of SP songs. I don’t have a single memory of ours that one isn’t playing…from taking “Pumpkin Breaks” while studying, literally smashing our Halloween pumpkins for a photo opp, or just driving around back roads listening to them non-stop, singing at the top of our lungs! We used to jokingly say she was going to marry Billy and I would marry James…lol. I even named my daughter D’Arcy and she just so happens to be an aspiring singer. My best friend passed away unexpectedly 6 years ago (R.I.P. C-rock!) but every now and then a Pumpkins song will randomly come on the radio and I know it’s her popping in to say hi. Thank you for being my life’s soundtrack, SP! xoxo -s