The Silence of The World : A look at Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness 20 years later

Where were you the first time you heard Billy Corgan utter the words “The world is a vampire?”

The year was 1995, and me, I was in 7^th grade at the time. I was an overweight junior high student with an unfortunate bowl cut who spent a lot of time watching videos on MTV after school.

My parents had split up a few months prior, but the Smashing Pumpkins had been a big deal in my house for about two years. My father, a consummate reader of the Sunday Chicago Tribune got on the bandwagon early on with Siamese Dream—long before it was getting airplay on “Alternative Nation.”

I have some pretty specific memories attached to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness—like seeing the “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” video for the first time and being transfixed by Corgan’s “Zero” shirt. I too would own a “Zero” t-shirt once the band started manufacturing them—I bought it with my birthday money the following summer at a Sam Goody in Rockford.

Or like my friend Andy buying the album right when it came out and bringing the 2xCD in its big, clunky jewel case to school the next day, and being nervous flashing around the lyric book because of the actual title to the song “An Ode to No One.”

Or like getting it for Christmas from my father’s girlfriend (they would eventually marry) and playing “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” over and over again before eventually diving into the other video singles like “1979” and “33,” and then eventually other songs without numbers in the title, like “Muzzle.”

Or how that same Christmas, from my Grandmother, I received my first discman—a RCA I believe, that ate four AA batteries like they were absolutely nothing. Mellon Collie and the soundtrack to the movie Angus were the two things I played the most on within the first few days of receiving it.

In revisiting Mellon Collie upon its 20^th anniversary, it provided me the opportunity reflect on the album, the place it’s had in my life and in my memories, and on its legacy.

Billy Corgan is not that good of a vocalist

Like, I can say that, too, because I am not a singer. I can’t sing. I can’t carry a tune or hold a note. I never learned how to sing and once, like 15 years ago, someone told me I was a terrible singer and it gave me a complex about it. Anyway, Corgan’s voice was, and is still I guess, an acquired taste.

I mean, by Mellon Collie, he’s grown into his nasally snarl a little better than he had on Gish, and yes, there are parts where his voice actually works within the context of a specific song—I guess it depends on which range he’s singing in, and what he’s trying to do. But the whine and the scream, well, they can be a little much. Especially on a double album—more on that later.

It’s so brutal at times, and then at other times not as brutal

As a sound, the album is all over the place—opening with a bit of a bait and switch with the instrumental title track and then the cinematic “Tonight, Tonight,” before diving into the brash, “metal” sound that the band had a penchant for.

And, again, they’d come along way from the pretty generic “rock” sound of Gish, but there’s a bulk of Mellon Collie that is possibly more aggressive than it needs to be—double bass drum attacks and squealing guitar theatrical fuckery—that gives the songs an edge, but also makes them come off as forgettable filler, especially 20 years later.

But then, there are places where they sound a completely different band—lush string arrangements, harps, and sweeping cinematic moments on songs like “33” or “Galapagos.” There are songs that barely rise above a whisper when compared to their absolutely ridiculous sounding counterparts.

This hasn’t aged well in some places, and it’s kind of a nostalgia trip

I took a Virgin Mary ax to his sweet baby Jane
Lost my innocence to a no good girl
Scratch my face with anvil hands
And coil my tongue around a bumblebee mouth

I mean, the 90s was known for some pretty embarrassing lyrics. But those, those right there, taken from “Fuck You (an Ode to No One)” maybe take the cake for some of the worst.

Some of these lyrics are pretty cringeworthy or laughable by 2015 standards, and the messianic references that are scattered throughout can cause quiet an eye roll. But man, if that “And God is empty, just like MMEEEEEE,” on “Zero” still doesn’t strike some kind of chord today….

But for real though, when was the last time you sat down and listened to Mellon Collie from start to finish—all 28 songs? If it’s been a minute, maybe you have forgotten about lines like that up there, and how many other parts of this album haven’t aged very well at all.

I found it was mostly all of the harder, more aggressive songs that couldn’t withstand the test of the last 20 years—perhaps at the time they were fresh and innovative in sound, but now, it all sounds a little flat.

However, there are moments that still sound as innovative as they did in 1995—specifically “1979”—the oddball pop song sequenced early on in the album’s second half. The lyrics—Genius would have you believe it’s about the transition from youth into adulthood; and maybe they are right. It’s perfectly ambiguous, pulsing along to the first time the band really injected electronics into an arrangement—something they plunged headfirst into on this album’s follow up, three years later.

Through some kind of magic, “1979” is a song that has transcend all of the other pitfalls of this album. It’s evocative, and more importantly, it’s alive in ways that a lot of the other songs on this record no longer are.

Of the songs that didn’t age terribly, or are just mindless rock songs (like the one I am listening to right now where Corgan just keeps screaming “Love is suicide,” over and over again) I find that these are, for the most part, songs I didn’t take with me over time—I didn’t listen to Mellon Collie throughout my life, therefore, a bulk of it is stuck in the 90s, transporting me back to my 7^th grade year, and the winter of 1995/96 when I hear them. Sure, there are good songs on here, like “Muzzle” for example, or “Here is No Why.”

But I didn’t listen to them in college, or in the last ten years as a grown ass man or whatever. It’s just music that takes me back to my old CD boombox and my old room in the apartment that my mother and I lived in at the time.

Where did Billy Corgan’s hair go?

This has little to do with the music on this album, but like, what happened to Billy Corgan’s hair?

He had a full head of hair in the “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” video but then like a few months later, it was all gone.

Conclusion

Mellon Collie is the sound of the band peaking. It was all leading up to this moment—this moment where they made a huge artistic statement, and then it all fell apart. Less than a year later, their tour keyboardist overdosed on the road and Jimmy Chamberlin was thrown out of the band because of his heroin problem, only to be invited back on numerous occasions throughout the band’s tumultuous history.

The group never really bounced back from his dismissal—releasing the maligned Adore in 2008 and then their (temporary) swan song in 2000 before disbanding for the first time, and reforming in 2007 with only Corgan and Chamberlin returning as the original members of the group.

A double album is always a gamble—sometimes the risk pays off, and sometimes it’s clear you could have benefited from some self-editing. Such is the case here. A bulk of the heavier songs could just be done away with completely, especially from the turgid final half of the second disc of this thing, and you’d still have an interesting, and somewhat diverse mix of music pairing this down to one album.

20 years later, what does this album mean? It was obviously very successful, and made the band a household name for a time. I guess it’s the sound of a band on verge—a verge of the really big break they needed, but also the sound of it all collapsing shortly after they got there.

It was an important album for the time, but does it still stand to be called important? Has it influenced countless other bands, or did it redefine a sound or start a movement?

20 years later, what does this album mean for me? Well, not a ton I guess, upon seriously revisiting it. For all of the somewhat iconic things associated with it, it seems like it has not done well of being “timeless” and to an extent, it’s just become a relic of the 90s—something that is looked back on with nostalgia but not something that has grown with you.