Bang Bang You're Dead... POLL In Your Head - ILM Artist Poll #87 - SMASHING PUMPKINS - Results

I mean, I've got gaps in my knowledge but I know some things, y'know??? Twelve years on ILM will end up adding some stuff to your canon in any case, pretty sure I got to know that song from this place...

listening to "to forgive" rn and i love the bridge of this song too bc it seems to express the emotion being suppressed in the chorus. also: the synth figure at the end of the bridge which is the only appearance of a synth in the whole song(?). it transitions really nicely into "shame" on the playlist. two really beautifully wrought atmospheres

Tonight, Tonight is too low imo, the strings are absolutely gorgeous and the way it shifts between the huge strings and the intimate guitar arpeggios is lovely, always been a favourite.

https://i.imgur.com/B0e3FwX.jpg
22. Muzzle
358 points, 14 votes
From: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, 1995

i love the harmonics(?) in "zero" so much

"muzzle" too low

oh shit i didn't vote for it lol

yeah that synth always gets me. It only plays six notes

Would’ve been in my top 10 years ago but didn’t make my ballot. Great, super simple song.

god everything about "snail" is just amazing

Muzzle is one of the best. It has this breathless quality, like it's all just tumbling out in a rush.

i love that "muzzle" is sequenced next to "porcelina" bc i think of it as a miniature porcelina, a summary of the band in a 3.5 minute pop song

i put together my ballot in about 10 minutes, and i'm bummed i somehow didn't even include "shame", even though it's one of my favorite tracks on adore. errors of exclusion, and also misallocation errors like putting "tonight, tonight" at #4! i do really like "tonight, tonight", but i didn't mean to throw it that many points.

was MCIS anyone else's intro to SP? it pretty much was, for me. i didn't have cable and completely missed out on siamese dream, and then picked up MCIS on the advice of a friend. from that perspective, opening pair of tracks were the perfect demo of their range, the quiet piano-led overture (with those mellotron strings that i still love today) opening up into the cinematic sweep of "tonight, tonight". as a budding drummer i loved the way such a majestic song could be driven by a single snare drum, and the way the strings and the majesty of it all piled up in the last section entranced my 14-year-old mind (i didn't come across MCIS until 1997).

"Muzzle" just missed my ballot.

it was my intro karl! i bought mellon collie at a tower records a few weeks after i saw the "bullet with butterfly wings" video. one of my first cds and my first ever double album

the drumming on Muzzle is really great and the solo & bridge rule but it's a little too repetitive otherwise I think

yeah, i think maybe my first double album as well! i think i got The Wall around the same time, which seems appropriate. :)

My introduction to this band - and I'm dating myself here - was the Lull EP. I probably would've bought Gish but my local record store - the long-defunct Pikesville, MD Record and Tape Traders - only had this EP on cassette, so that's what I went with after reading some brief press items about this up-and-coming Chicago band with the weird name.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2503723CB22F84D0

i completely missed out on sd too but that's bc i wasn't allowed to watch mtv before i was seven (the "scream" video premiered on mtv and there was no way my parents were going to stop me from seeing that, and that kinda broke the seal)

I've been pointlessly amending my ballot as we go and already made four substitutions and a number of reallocations. I definitely needed Glynis on my ballot, and probably needed Drown and Luna to be higher.

jmm, maybe that's a new thread after this poll is over? revised ballots

i've never loved "silverfuck" bc it's the most tossed off bullshit lyric on siamese dream but it does rock and... it was certainly an event live

"Muzzle" was my #2 and is the closing track on all my mental re-edits of MCIS. A tremendous anthem and encapsulation of so many of the things the band did best and unashamedly, the tortured guitar-angel poet whining his barbaric yawp into the starry night. The succession of the "and I knew" sequence, the "and the world" sequence and finally the repetition of "I knew the silence of the world" makes it feel three times as epic somehow. A different version of the Zero-Silverfuck link: they've folded what would have been an eight-minute SD track into under four minutes (my station at least took the promo-single cue and gave this significant airplay for a while) but it still feels like it has the scope and drama of the epic. BN's "miniature Porcelina" is a great way to think about it.

MCIS was 100% my intro. I knew people with SD t-shirts in sixth grade but I didn't really hear or get into any current music until right around 95-96 as I started high school. Probably got it as a Christmas item in 1996. Not sure if it was my first double CD - I probably already had All Things Must Pass. I didn't get Siamese Dream until late in '97 (it was on my birthday list and my brother obliged).

MCIS was my real intro, but I may have heard SD at my cousin's house while listening to his CDs a year or two earlier. He had Radiohead, Pumpkins, and NIN CDs, and was wearing a Tool t-shirt, and had Shining and Reservoir Dogs posters, and a girlfriend with a Marilyn Manson shirt. It was all very overwhelming.

https://i.imgur.com/TqBzIxI.jpg
21. For Martha
380 points, 15 votes, 1 #1 vote
From: Adore, 1998

yessss

"for martha" was the first song i learned on piano.

too low!

This is a pretty amazing song.

it wasn't my no. 1 or anything but it's probably his most accomplished song imo

Great, great song. You listen to this and realize how much restraint and balance Corgan had then. He - or the band, or whatever - could seemingly do ANYTHING for a while there.

I really should've had For Martha on my ballot, had a realisation literally just this morning how amazing it is.

it was also like in the middle of listening to this song at 3am when i was 13 years old that i was like "yes actually adore is my favorite album of all time"

there's an alternative version of Adore in my head that excises the more electro-goth songs (which i really like, don't get me wrong!) and instead leans heavily on the ballad-goth songs:

to sheila
once upon a time
tear
shame
behold! the night mare
for martha
blank page

only 7 songs and ~40 minutes, but for me these are the core songs of adore

the heart songs

WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR placing this high just lifts the heart, damn

OTM, Whir is all-time.

I'm guessing that "Crestfallen" is somewhere up ahead. Right?

RIGHT?!?

For Martha was the only song that made sense to me when I first heard Adore. really incredible song and one of their most moving. the way the guitar solo explodes into existence!

that's the last one for now

Muzzle way too low! my fav track on MatIS

Way behind but: the "Zero" riff is incredible! It's such a simple idea but just by sliding his finger down that stretch of the low sixth string with a load of distortion, he basically plays a catchy descending Eb major arpeggio in just intonation on the 6th, 5th, and 4th harmonics. It made my top 10 mostly for that + the noise solo.

I'm guessing that "Crestfallen" is somewhere up ahead. Right?

RIGHT?!?

― The Harsh Tutelage of Michael McDonald (Raymond Cummings), Saturday, April 7, 2018 10:12 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i voted for it real high but i'm guessing: no

recap so far:

21 For Martha 380 15 1
22 Muzzle 358 14 0
23 Tonight, Tonight 348 14 0
24 Silverfuck 338 13 0
25 Whir 336 11 1
26 Zero 328 13 0
27 Frail and Bedazzled 322 11 1
28 Siva 314 13 1
29 Snail 310 11 0
30 Hello Kitty Kat 294 14 1
31 Shame 274 10 0
32 To Forgive 266 9 0
33 Appels + Oranjes 250 9 0
35 I Am One 234 9 0
35 Beautiful 234 9 1
36 Quiet 232 9 0
37 Bullet With Butterfly Wings 228 9 0
38 Bodies 226 8 0
39 Love 216 11 0
40 Bury Me 214 10 0
41 Luna 208 10 0
42 To Sheila 196 10 1
43 Behold! The Night Mare 188 8 0
44 Glynis 184 8 0
45 Blank Page 180 9 0
46 Eye 172 9 0
47 Where Boys Fear To Tread 170 7 0
48 By Starlight 162 9 0
49 Cupid de Locke 156 9 0
52 Age of Innocence 154 5 0
52 Crush 154 6 1
52 I of the Mourning 154 5 1
53 Pug 150 6 0
56 Spaceboy 142 6 0
56 Ava Adore 142 6 0
56 Wound 142 7 0
58 Tear 134 4 0
58 Real Love 134 7 0
59 Suffer 128 5 0
60 Disarm 124 6 0
61 X.Y.U. 122 5 1
62 Farewell and Goodnight 120 4 0
63 Glass and the Ghost Children 118 4 0
64 The Boy 116 4 0
65 Stumbleine 112 6 0
66 Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness 110 3 1

For Martha is the kind of overblown epic that MCIS needed to end with. Unfortunately they didn't close Adore with it either.

'for martha' would have been a great closer, it's true. i really love "blank page", though. the sound of beautiful exhaustion

pretty dope list so far tbh. aside from a few things i really can't stand, it's shaping up to be a killer "everything good about the band in one place" playlist. crazy to me that some really canonical songs only had like nine or eleven people voting for them. i could imagine we're about to hit a real jump point where everything showed up in at least half of the ballots. kinda thinking "drown" might take this as something i can't imagine anybody not putting somewhere in their 25. but there's a lot of heavy hitters that haven't shown up yet. only thirteen songs from my ballot have placed so far and of the ones that haven't i feel like the only one i can safely rule out at this point is "This Time."

I didn't get a chance to vote, but jesus this is a trip down memory lane. I didn't go much beyond Mellon Collie at the time, but this has brought back many stoned nights in my parent's garage. I'd have had Mayonnaise at #1 fwiw. Or maybe Snail.

Is it too obvious to mention how much Mogwai wanted to sound like Slint but actually nicked a huge chunk of their sound from Silverfuck?

I don't know. I think This Time still has a good shot. "As the curtain falls we bid you all goodnight" packed a punch.

About nine songs from my ballot have made it so far; maayyyybe five more songs will join them in the final stretch.

Yeah Mogwai were basically an instrumental SD cover band early on. Then they got a lot worse as they tried to be Tortoise and got the Godspeed You Black Emperor disease.

Fuck, every song that's placed in the Top 30 so far is a masterpiece.