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

33 is one of those songs that would've made it onto my ballot if ballots could've been longer.

Thirty-Three is maybe their most perfect song, not my #1 but it could have been easily

You're probably sick of hearing this, ufo, but: thank you so much for managing this poll and rollout. It's brightened my last few weeks.

doc casino otm about the song titles

(CD-5s, not CD-Rs.)

The drumming in set the ray to jerry is amazing idk why some of you don’t feel it, it’s one of their grooviest moments.

Happy to see it in the top 20 as well as Obscured.

I should have placed Thirty-Three higher. It didn't do a ton for me as a youth (since it was about being the elderly, cane-reliant top-hat age of thirty-three) but mannnnn is it a great piece of songwriting. They not only pull off "graceful swans of Never TOPPLE TO THE EARTH" but make it one of the most memorable and hooky lines of their career. I wish it didn't have the video tbh, that kind of put pictures on it, and too-specific ones by their standards.

Same problem for Tonight, Tonight honestly - by the time I had the album it was this celebrated item in countdowns of Great Music Videos but it kind of ties the song to a fannish pastiche (albeit a fun and very Pumpkinsy one) which for years kept me from grabbing how as a mission statement (the impossible is POSSIBLE *tonight*!) it was the equal of "Rocket."

lmao at those potential alternate song titles. Stand Inside Your Love is just oblique and pumpkins enough to work imo though. I think he was asked about the mostly one-obscure-word song titles of Ogilala in an interview recently and just gave a vague answer about finding the words inspiring or something?

Thirty-Three is almost certainly their best video

Doctor Casino, one of the more fascinating aspects of the YouTube era is discovering how many videos I didn't know existed for songs I've known/loved forever, and then realizing "thank GOD I never saw those videos until long after the fact."

Which is to say: until a few years ago I didn't even know there WAS a Thirty-Three video.

I wonder if "Stand Inside Your Love" would feel more of a Pumpkinsy piece to me if it was called like, "Tabletop" or "Tread" or "Zork" or something.

lmao

I think “Stand inside your love” is my favorite music video of them. At least is the one where all of the band look the coolest, in all the others James Iha always looks awkward... in others Corgan has a cowboy hat.

I think the title of Stand Inside Your Love made it feel that much more like they were trying to have a BIG hit, like, oh, anthemic songs about love are crossover gold! Here's a big ballad-sounding name! Along with the "Jimmy's back and they're ROCKING again" there was just a lot of "please clap" hype around that record and then the actual music just wasn't what I wanted from them. Throw in the fact that I was transitioning into college and indie rock and killing my old major-label idols (Pitchfork *savaged* Machina iirc, even making some really strange leaps - "Heavy Metal Machine" as a "Rusty Cage" ripoff???) and it never really had the same chance as Adore, where I kept putting it on even though it didn't grab me at first listen, cause I didn't have THAT many CDs and it had cost me eighteen bucks and the booklet was nice. (Teenage confession: the shot with D'Arcy in the see-through mesh top both intrigued and intimidated/unsettled me.)

In that light, much as I don't like the album, I for one think it's GREAT that this poll reveals that tons of fans older and younger have found lots that they like and relate to in that record - means it's gotten out of the shadow of its original circumstances. I don't think I'll ever hear it and not pick up the particular smell of my dad's car on the hot summer day when I got it, but idk, it's cool to me that someone could become a Pumpkins fan in the 2010s and find all kinds of things to fall in love with on their one (pre-breakup) album that really was almost universally derided upon release.

https://i.imgur.com/IBbWYvy.jpg
6. Cherub Rock
830 points, 25 votes, 1 #1 vote
From: Siamese Dream, 1993

https://www.google.com/amp/s/pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11829-machinathe-machines-of-god/amp/ lollll wow at this review

Yeah, that's one of the early P4K reviews that stays with me.

there are so many weird layers of guitar feedback/ebow work running through all of "perfect"

Chamberlin's overproduced, steady clicking on MACHINA sounds exactly like-- and might as well be-- a drum machine.

This man got rich running a music publication.

anyway i think "cherub rock" is fine. iirc there are a few interviews with billy where he's like "i wrote that song in an hour but it took me only five minutes to write 'today'." i prefer the five-minute effort

This is my favorite bit of that review, for whatever reason.

"Every track on MACHINA sits in a heavy syrup of synthesizer. Flood deep-fries the sound in golden calf fat. Guitars hiss like hig pressure hoses. Gelatinous bass issues from the crust like pus. The psoriatic sound comes off like infected yellow scabs growing on fragile frosted glass. If this is a "return to form," Billy Corgan has thrown his baby-head out with the bathwater. Siamese Dream never utilized computer and keyboard crutches to such a degree."

I think “Stand inside your love” is my favorite music video of them. At least is the one where all of the band look the coolest, in all the others James Iha always looks awkward... in others Corgan has a cowboy hat.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Sunday, April 8, 2018 8:02 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i love the "siyl" video, i think it's really beautifully shot and organized and yeah everyone in the band looks amazing, feels like it should've been an adore-era video

I remember it looking expensive.

i'm sure it was that too

definitely the best Billy ever pulled off the huge gothic skirt thing he tried a number of times

queer utopia where everyone is wearing enormous gowns and the most traditional representation of masculinity sits on a toilet throne

https://i.imgur.com/NbIXs4C.jpg
5. Soma
844 points, 24 votes, 4 #1 votes
From: Siamese Dream, 1993

this is prob my favorite ilx poll since.. van? maybe my favorite ever

[Guitar Solo]

def the song I was most obsessed with as a #teen and the first time I really understood the power of dynamics

I guess if Landslide is gonna place, it's gonna have to happen really damn soon.

nah

https://i.imgur.com/1sf8Djv.jpg
4. Hummer
888 points, 24 votes, 5 #1 votes
From: Siamese Dream, 1993

These last three together are killing me. This is everything great about Pumpkins in their prime.

Xp
I'd take rhinoceros over starla any day. The proggy bombast of the latter does not help. In a way the soaring reminds me of gybe! And i miss a melody. Rhinoceros on the other hand i totally love with all my heart. The outer space beginning, the slow and tender tune evolving and hanging there for such a long time, and then the guitar-feedback explosion. It's all in there. Such a simple, effective song. Probably the one song which i'd choose by them.

5 #1s!

I like to imagine this song predicts the commercial failure of Hum

Yeah, Rhinoceros is the one my adult self would keep...

lol i thought "it'd be funny if hummer placed right after soma" and lo

my dim hope is mayonaise bests 1979

fine with either winning but only one is on my ballot

who knows maybe "drown" won

I'm really hoping for that!

"rocket" was the first song with more than one no. 1 voter. wow @ "hummer" having five

Hummer-Cherub Rock-Soma were my top 3 in that order, but they could have probably been in any order.

I only realized after the voting period that my top 2 both include musical quotes from Rush:

https://youtu.be/stBOhNxLrbM?t=4m34s
https://youtu.be/1pcNP9JE0bs?t=6m9s

And I think flappy pointed this one out:
https://youtu.be/2UU62UcP_BA?t=3m53s
https://youtu.be/q-KE9lvU810?t=18s

https://i.imgur.com/fZ1oMJK.jpg
3. Drown
920 poits, 26 votes, 3 #1 votes
From: Singles: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 1992

amazing

heh, I voted for every song in the top 10. What do I win?

3-6 is my top 4.