Horizon

Zachary Osseo, MN, US

I found out about The Smashing Pumpkins when I was 15 years old, and they’ve since been my favorite band, (I’m 19, now).  It was a fun time of my life; an age of discovery, thoroughly wrought with long nights spent alone in my room, listening to shoegaze, drawing and painting the nights away.

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was the first CD I ever bought, (at the aforementioned age, at a Down in the Valley).  I brought it home and and studied every square inch of the jewel case / booklet whilst religiously listening to those 122 minutes on repeat, and found myself endlessly tantalized
by the artwork displayed on the back of the CD case… The sheer beauty conveyed in the piece was heartwarming to my young soul.  I decided I’d use it as inspiration for a drawing, (as, above all else, I’m first an artist).  So, I began the three-week-straight process of creating a wonderful pen and ink piece, appropriately named, “Horizon”.

At 15, and to this day, I considered this piece the “turning point” of my artistic endeavors.  It was when my art became an identity for me, really.  It marked the “growing up” of both me and my art; for no longer was I churning out mindless sketches of heads exploding and people eating eyeballs.  No, from that point on, my art became something greater.

I think this theme of “growing up” is prominent throughout the entirety of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and, thankfully it crept in and played its part in my life.  15 was also a very lonely time of life for me, and these themes are as well evident throughout the album.  I experienced my first love, and first breakup.  It was the age when most, if not all, of my childhood friends decided it best to abandon me for one reason or another.

However, through better or worse and through thick and thin, all of these things have played a huge part in creating who I am today, and that’s, at the very least, someone who’s alive and smiles often.

I think that’s the lesson that could be taken away from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.  It’s a wildly manic record that soars from the highest highs of, “Tonight, Tonight” to the gaping, trenching lows of “X.Y.U.” — from track to track, it’s always on the horizon of something new.

And, what is life if not that, exactly?

I don’t know, man.

P.S. —
one funny memory I have from first becoming a fan: I’d frequently play Smashing Pumpkins on my family’s Amazon Echo, and, because of this, turned on most of my 8 younger siblings to the band.  Due to this, I distinctly remember my younger brothers yelling, “Alexa, play “Rat in a Cage!“

Christmas

Jim Pleasant Ridge, MI, US

I gave this CD to my brother for Christmas when we were in high school. I slept on the floor of his room and we listened to the whole thing and then fell asleep on the repeat listen.  I cherish that memory and will always cherish this album. 

The Greatest Concert

Kayes Saskatoon, Saskatchewan , CA

I was 18 and in my first year of university when I saw the Smashing Pumpkins in 1996. It was a life changing experience! I have seen many many legendary bands and to this day The MCIS tour was  the best concert I’ve ever seen. 

My sleeve

KayTee Topeka, KS, US

Since the first time I saw the video for Tonight, Tonight, I was obsessed.  I finally took the plunge and got a sleeve done based on the video.  Mellon Collie has held the #1 album spot on my list since it’s release and I don’t think it will be moving any time soon.

Love on Repeat

Michelle CA, US

When I was a kid I washed cars to save up money and this was the first CD/Double Disc I ever bought. I listened to both Discs over and over with my crappy little CD player. I only took my headphones off for class and to shower, it was my escape. Still my top favorite, classics never get old

Tonight Tonight

Fernando Ordaz Mexico City , MX

This álbum remindme a Stage of youth and innocence. It’s like going back in time where the only cares was knowing about new music and watch music videos. 

Young Love

John Midland, MI, US

My memory involves an X-girlfriend I never quite got over. I still think of Becky when I listen to Mellon Collie… we fell in love to it. We were 20-21 years old, and I remember buying it the day it came out, and bringing it to her house to listen. I don’t think we knew it at the time, but we were living the best years of our lives. 1995 will always be a special year to remember, with a great soundtrack. ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. 

My Teenage Bible

Sam Woy Woy, AU

I was in Jr High School when a teacher heard I wanted to get into listen to Mellon Collie but I wasn’t able to get the album at the time. He made me a copy and one day gave it to me as a gift in school. First time I listened to it I was blown away, it all mad sense to the feelings I had at the time towards school, my friends, my teenage mind and the world. I would listen to it at any time I could, fell asleep listening to it, listened to it during school it became as I describe it my “Teenage Bible”. Today it still remains an album close to me as it helped me during my struggling teen years. 

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/