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Official Smashing Pumpkins thread
- Thread starter Diablos
- Start date
FrenchMovieTheme
Member
wow, billy corgan is a bad lyricist? everyone is entitled to their own opinion but wow... you can knock his vocals and his recent choice in music, but his lyrics have always been pretty awesome in my book.
yeah i know, you can probably pull out some lame line in a song and say "see? lolz" but i can do that to any artist as well. bottom line is he writes some pretty incredible lyrics
yeah i know, you can probably pull out some lame line in a song and say "see? lolz" but i can do that to any artist as well. bottom line is he writes some pretty incredible lyrics
distantmantra
Member
Luna104 said:
Track down the full audio recording, it's much better than what VH1 edited and aired. I'll try and dig up my CD copy and make a set for you if you'd like.
distantmantra
Member
Luna104 said:
It's a three CDr recording with loads of cool tidbits and a performance of Let Me Give the World to You. I remember getting the set from a fellow AMSPer long before it ever aired on VH1.
Let me see if I can find it one of my numerous CD binders-o-Pumpkin shows.
FrenchMovieTheme
Member
i'm getting a good vibe surrounding the record. then again i have liked everything the pumpkins have ever done so whatever.
FrenchMovieTheme said:
"Life's a bummer / when you're a hummer."
I don't mean to make too much fun of him, because I do think he gets slighted when they speak of the big alterna-rock gods. Kurt "Voice of a Generation" Cobain gets away with "Aqua seafoam shame," so Billy should get away with "coil my tongue around a bumblebee mouth" too. And, I thought the words to "Cherub Rock" were pretty good, but I can't think of another example of good lyrics. Most of all, I think you like the sound of the words. "Thirty three" is one of my favorite SP songs, but those lyrics don't mean ANYTHING. They just sound pretty, and trying to find anything serious in them is pointless and high school-ish.
Mike Works
Member
so i have a handful of SP songs on my ipod:
Bullet with Butterfly Wings
Zero
Tonight, Tonight
Ava Adore
and i like them all (in that order).. when i was younger i listened to Melane Cholie all the ****ing time, but since then sort of dropped out of the SP universe.. songs like Perfect and 1979 i think are okay, but i'm more in the mood for their harder stuff
are there any songs similar to those above that you guys would recommend i check out?
Bullet with Butterfly Wings
Zero
Tonight, Tonight
Ava Adore
and i like them all (in that order).. when i was younger i listened to Melane Cholie all the ****ing time, but since then sort of dropped out of the SP universe.. songs like Perfect and 1979 i think are okay, but i'm more in the mood for their harder stuff
are there any songs similar to those above that you guys would recommend i check out?
Teknopathetic
Member
I listen to Gish and Siamese Dream on the regular, but Corgan's lyrics are pretty laughable.
TheDrowningMan
Member
kingofrod said:
Yes. They sound good, but for the most part they're nothing special.
I lived by The Smashing Pumpkins for the majority of my teenage years but you know, in retrospect lyrics were not his strong point and I find so much to cringe over now. I can think of dozens of better lyricists, from Tom Waits to Nick Cave to Bob Dylan to Morrissey to Mark Oliver Everett etc, etc.
He's far from the WORST lyricist out there, but you'd be hard pressed to find much genius in that aspect of his work, fantastic musician though he is. I actually think Adore is his most consistent effort on that level, perhaps because, for the most part, its lack of bombast reigned in some of his more ridiculous attempts.
kingofrod said:
Well, wait a minute: I've loved every single second of Mellon Collie back in 1995, and still love it. Twelve years ago i was fifteen and I listened to MCIS lyrics in a way totally different in comparison with today. MCIS songs like Galapogos, Muzzle, To Forgive, In the Arms of Sleep have such a deep, they have changed with me, all these years. Now they are telling me something different, not better, than what they used to tell me twelve years ago. The same thing can be said of a lot of Corgan lyrics and Smashing Pumpkins song: Soma, Silver**** (!), Once Upon a Time, Stand Inside Your Love, Age of Innocence, With Every Light...
FrenchMovieTheme
Member
like i said, you can say anyones lyrics suck or that they don't mean anything to you. why is your favorite lyricist better than billy corgan? because you identify with his words better or they make more sense to you or whatever the case is. trying to find anything serious in any lyrics is pointless and high school-ish because anyone can break down any song and make it trivial or make a joke about it or whatever, so then that brings us back to square 1 where you just say fug it
Everyone's guilty of writing lyrics that don't hold much weight or are just plain dumb, especially in the realm of alternative rock. But Billy's proven with every single album he's done, be it Pumpkins or otherwise, that he consistently does turn out songs with good lyrics.Tre said:
I could name songs from every single band I know of that have bad lyrics. For example, I love QOTSA, but they have some terrible lyrics. I listened to "In My Head" all last week, even though the lyrics suck. I still love listening to that song.
"Hummer" is a personal term Corgan used to describe his old girlfriend, when she wasn't interested in him or just about anything.
Bah, nevermind. I can't read today. Still, I think you're a bit inaccurate in labeling him as a mediocre lyricist at best.
distantmantra
Member
Diablos said:
Check out the entire Zero EP in that case.
Mike Works said:
**** You (An Ode to No One) and Jellybelly are both great hard songs, both off Mellon Collie. I'm also quite attached to Hello Kitty Kat (this one being one of my top favorites) and Pissant off Pisces Iscariot (which are back to back on that album, which is otherwise fairly mellow), Geek USA and Quiet off Siamese Dream, and The Everlasting Gaze and Heavy Metal Machine off their final Machina album. Cash Car Star off the freely available Machina II album is also fairly hard...and if you can track down Dross and/or Jackboot in particular, those are nothing short of great, hard, guitar riff-centered tracks though neither is on any album.
Missed your post.Tyrone Slothrop said:
Actually, while he only *posted* a few online, he stole 39. The band is going to have to re-take them all now.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1559151/20070509/smashing_pumpkins.jhtml
$100,000 bond.
http://cbs2chicago.com/local/local_story_129150949.html
distantmantra
Member
I received a small audio clip of what is supposedly the new 2007 Pumpkins. It's pretty distorted, so it's hard to tell if it's a live clip or studio material. It's much like a snippet from Pastichio Medley. In any event, the drums sound a lot like something Jimmy would do, and the guitars are convincing, but I still doubt it's legitimacy due to the lack of vocals.
distantmantra
Member
Diablos said:
I'm one of those picky old timers, then. I have very very low expectations. This will never compare to the heyday of the band when I was following their every move and traveling all over the west coast catching shows.
FrenchMovieTheme
Member
i expect nothing less from a seachickens fan 
oohhhh!
Nick: Honestly? Just browse the Netphoria Pumpkins/Corgan/Zwan forum for five minutes. It's quite amusing.
That's one thing I like about SP's fanbase, though. We all have different opinions or see the band in a different way, opposed to some fanbases *cough*Tool*cough* where everyone follows their favorite band like sheep.
edit: I have also heard the clip distantmantra mentioned. The drumming at the beginning sounds a lot like I Am One from around 1994. If only the quality was better, I could hear the snare to determine if it's Jimmy.
edit: hoho, look at this:
Nick: Honestly? Just browse the Netphoria Pumpkins/Corgan/Zwan forum for five minutes. It's quite amusing.
That's one thing I like about SP's fanbase, though. We all have different opinions or see the band in a different way, opposed to some fanbases *cough*Tool*cough* where everyone follows their favorite band like sheep.
edit: I have also heard the clip distantmantra mentioned. The drumming at the beginning sounds a lot like I Am One from around 1994. If only the quality was better, I could hear the snare to determine if it's Jimmy.
edit: hoho, look at this:
If this sounds like Gish... I'm gonna faint. Well, not really, but you get the idea.
distantmantra
Member
FrenchMovieTheme said:i expect nothing less from a seachickens fan
Nothing will ever compare to seeing the original lineup back in 1991 and 1993. Just can't compare.
But, who am I kidding... once this hits I'm sure that fanboy I've tried long and hard to quell will once again rise up and consume me.
Walter Matthau
Member
Corgan's lyrical peak was definitely Adore. Albums like Gish/Siamese Dream are known for the music, not the lyrics.
Nick said:
I don't know if other Pumpkins fans will dig the new album -- the extent of my conversation with anyone else with anything more than a passing interest in SP is what you see here with Diablos. Personally speaking, short of the earlier 1989 sound (which is reminiscent of Gish with less of a fleshed out of a sound), I like just about anything Billy puts to disc (or Jimmy, or James, etc). There's a quality to their stuff that I can't find anywhere else, but honestly, you give Jimmy a drum set and let Billy write a bit of his guitars, and I'm set.
BigJonsson
Member
XYU is a wicked awesome song
Rindain said:
Unless you're trying to paint a picture of "90s alt-rock band creates politically tinged modern day album" as an American Idiot knock-off...no. Besides, if anything, those albums have been nothing short of fantastic. American Idiot was, as was Pearl Jam's latest. Just turn off your expectations, and when we hear something, as in an actual song, we can start talking about what form the album may have.