This is the last Smashing Pumpkins song I remember liking a lot. I was a huge fan of theirs... for their first two albums. Then they released the utterly self-indulgent Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness double album.
I was really excited to purchase that album until I heard it. It was uneven and, well, overproduced.
But the lead single from that album.... that was - is - a masterpiece. It opens with Billy Corgan in acapella, as if to punctuate his sentence "the world is a vampire" with James Iha's guitar coming in on the last syllable. The origins of the song do come from the Siamese Dream sessions, which probably explains why it's so much better than anything else on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.
It also became a hit song - surprisinging, their first top 40 hit, reaching number 22 on the Billboard charts and rising on other pop and alternative charts worldwide.
This video is the last time Billy Corgan was seen with hair. That's actually true - he shaved his head soon after the filming.
They did tour in support of this album, but the band self-destructed soon after. This is a performance from 1995 that seems to interpolate their new sound as well - but it's still a great performance, one of the last with the classic lineup.
The band eventually broke up in 2000 only to reform in 2006 - and went through some lineup changes. This iteration from 2023 does include the entire classic lineup except for D'Arcy Wretzky, who I , for one, miss - but that reunion is not likely to happen.
Despite using a different bassist, the band still sounds great, nearly 30 years after this song's initial release.
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