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
My memories
Katherine linville Oklahoma City, Ok, US
I have grown up listening to all the music I possibly can from William P Corgan. My dad was an alcoholic and growing up and tried using music as a way to keep sobriety on and off though the years. We used to sit for hours in front of a stereo with thousands of CD’s and cassettes and my favorite one he would play would be melancholy of infinite sadness. These memories are vivid and one of the best times in my life. It was when my dad was trying, it was when good music felt like sunshine. I still rely on SP to push me through rough days. Billy Corgan is a huge inspiration and without his music and this album I think my childhood would of been dulled. Thanks.
Walks With Dad
David Hernandez Brooklyn, NY, US
My dad and I used to walk together 2 miles every other day doing errands for years when I was a teenager. We used to always catch up during these times while listening to MCIS out of a tiny speaker. All the life lessons I learned and conversations we have continue to live alongside all the tracks of this album. The first mile for the first side, the second mile the second side. I plan to do this again with my kids one day.
The Beginning
Tara Drewry Memphis, TN, US
I’ll never forget sitting on the phone when Tonight, Tonight came on. I turned to look at the amazing sound coming from MTV. I saw Billy in his top hat and never looked back. Shortly after I discovered SP, Jonathan died. I was devastated when Jimmy was let go because I had tickets to the show in Memphis at the pyramid. Billy was not in a good place then and said we sucked. Ha! We do. I had the best time of my life and really felt like I found a happy place. I was severely bullied all my life. I escaped in SP and truly found happiness. Thank you. ❤️
“Forever Beautiful”
Raphael Goulart São Paulo, SP, BR
I recorded Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness on a k7 tape, the album was by a friend from school. During my best years of life, adolescence, that was my soundtrack. Even today when I hear Muzzle I can feel the same feeling of freedom, innocence, fear and happiness from those sweet years. If I were a musician I would have composed, the perfect one, “Thru The Eyes of Ruby”. Thank you for your masterpiece SP – Forever Beautiful.
Love
Andrew F. SCARSDALE, US
The year Mellon Collie came out was also the first time in my life that I fell in, and experienced, love. The songs fit so well, amplifying my happiness & making an already special time even moreso, giving me memories I will keep forever. I will always be grateful.
Life Changing Moment
MaryEllen Brooklyn, US
In the winter of 1995 I was a living in Connecticut and studying classical music at a State University. My dream at that tome was to be a composer and conductor, but my university did not offer that as a major. I was pretty seriously concentrated on classical music; one weekend I was stuck at my friends house during a blizzard and she played for me MCATIS. We subsequently played that album in repeat for almost a week. It changed everything for me in terms of what I wanted to do for a career. I decided that this was the type of music I wanted to create or be a part of creating. All of these years later I am doing exactly that and have my dream job. I 100% attribute that to this album and the inspiration it evoked. It changed my life forever.
The Everything Album
James Melbourne, AU
Mellon Collie set the stage for my tastes in music, art, fashion. It’s part of the a bedrock of my coming of age – providing a soundtrack to all pain, joy and wonderment a young adult goes through. Most significantly, it was the whole reason I started playing music. I described the music on MCIS as soundscapes, and I wanted to do the same. 25 years later, I’ve played hundreds of shows and toured internationally. Not professionally, and I’ve rarely been paid, but it’s pretty much been the focus and joy of my life that everything else has revolved around. Started by hearing Mellon Collie.