YMMV / The Smashing Pumpkins

• Archive Panic: There are only eleven official studio albums, so that doesn't seem too bad. And then you look at the band's colossal vault of B-sides and reissues. There are 114 tracks in the Rarities and B-Sides compilation alone, and that's not a complete representation of the band's works. And then you look at the reissues. Adore and The Aeroplane Flies High are the most expansive of these thus far, containing six CD's and a DVD each, which are all filled to the brim with bonus goodies. The running time of the reissued Adore alone is over nine hours. In short, good luck.
  • Note that there are still probably dozens of hours' worth of material left in the vaults. The Aeroplane Flies High contains a twenty-three-minute-long track called "Pastichio Medley", which is a collection of snippets of tracks from the Mellon Collie era that didn't even make B-side status. There are about seventy of them. Of these, two are formative versions of songs that eventually got released either on Mellon Collie or The Aeroplane, and a dozen more were eventually released on the 2011-2014 reissues. The remaining ones are mostly not available at all, though a few others have been bootlegged. It's quite plausible that similar amounts of material were left over from the other albums' sessions, or possibly even more, considering that Mellon Collie was a double album (and that around an additional hundred minutes' worth of material, excluding the medley, made it to B-side status). Say what you will about Billy Corgan, but he's mind-bogglingly productive.
• Award Snub: The band hasn't even showed up among the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame candidates. When the Pumpkins became eligible in 2016, Billy Corgan said they certainly deserve an induction, but two years later was already unsure if it will happen.
• Awesome Music: Has its own page.
• Broken Base: You can easily start a debate among fans as to whether or not the second time around, starting from Zeitgeist to Oceania and whatever comes after that, is considered truly The Smashing Pumpkins or just In Name Only.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • "Drown" to the Singles soundtrack. The song received lots of airplay despite a) Never being released as a single, and b) Being the only song on the album by a band from outside Seattle.
  • "Muzzle" is one of the band's post popular songs despite only being a promotional single, never even getting a full single release or music video.
  • Mellon Collie has a lot of these: "X.Y.U.," "Thru the Eyes of Ruby," "Bodies," "Where Boys Fear to Tread," "Jellybelly," and "In the Arms of Sleep" all arguably qualify.
  • "Set the Ray to Jerry" is quite popular despite never being on a full-length album (it was the closing track on the 1979 EP).
  • The band has a lot of B-sides that qualify as this. "Obscured", "Starla", "Cherry", "Let Me Give the World to You", "Here's to the Atom Bomb", etc. One of them ("Rotten Apples") even wound up being the title of the band's greatest hits compilation.
  • As far as albums go, Adore certainly fits these days (although the Pitchfork review of the reissue, which gave it an 8.5 and Best New Reissue, argues that it's cited as "underrated" so often that that can't possibly be true anymore). Machina II probably fits too, as it's generally regarded as a substantial improvement on the album to which it's a sequel.
  • As far as members go, Melissa lasted around a year with the band before the break up, and didn't appear on any albums. She's just as popular with fans as D'arcy and Nicole, though.
  • Possibly due to being the original girl in the band or her current reclusive nature, D'arcy continues to command a lot of attention from fans. It helps that in a lot of the band's promotional material from her time, she is often in center focus.
• Epic Riff: The live version of "Daphne Descends" has a truly glorious one.
  • Also, the intro and main riff from "Cherub Rock".
  • "Zero," "The Chimera" and "Siva" have some killer ones too.
  • "1979", "Rocket", "Soma", "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", "Silverfuck", "Set the Ray to Jerry"... they have a lot of them, really.
• Fan Community Nickname: "Ghost Children", based on the story of Machina / The Machines of God; also, "Pumpkinheads".
• Harsher in Hindsight: Back in 1995, as Mellon Collie slogged through a long development process, Corgan declared that "it either will be our last album, or it will be our last album as people know the Smashing Pumpkins." While it did not end up being their last album, it was the last album to feature the original lineup, as Corgan ended up firing drummer Jimmy Chamberlain for drug abuse during the ensuing tour, though Machina / The Machines of God was the last recorded album to feature them, as Chamberlain went into rehab after being fired and became sober thus rejoining the band but after recording for it and some songs for Machina II / The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music, bassist D'arcy Wretsky left and was replaced by Melissa Auf der Maur.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • "Luna" and "One Diamond One Heart," as well as "Pinwheels."
  • James Iha appearing as a guest on stage for a few shows in 2016, after apparently not talking to Billy since their last show in 2001. Billy revealed later on that he'd been in friendly contact with D'arcy earlier in the year too.
  • The music video for "Tonight Tonight," an homage to A Trip to the Moon where a cute couple goes on an adventurous date to the moon via an iron dirigible. Even better is that the actors playing them are married in real life.
  • Billy Corgan's disabled brother Jesse joining the band on stage playing the tambourine for 1979 for one of their concerts.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Billy's explained method of titling songs (explaining why Non-Appearing Title happens with them so much) seems to have given Sia some ideas:
  Say you write a song about a chandelier...
• Memetic Mutation: "Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage".
  • "Despite all my rage, I am still just Nicolas Cage."
  • "Despite all my rage, I am still eating chips on the stage."
  • From Zero Punctuation: "Despite Ellen Page, I am still stuck in David's Cage."
  • Billy Corgan rides a rollercoaster.
• Narm: Some lyrics from "The Celestials": "I may seem unafraid / And I may seem unashamed / But I will be Special K" and "I'm gonna love you 101 percent".
• Retroactive Recognition: The couple in the "Tonight, Tonight" video are real life married couple Tom Kenny and Jill Talley, both of whom who would be more known as SpongeBob and Karen the computer wife from SpongeBob SquarePants.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: "Christmastime," probably the single most positive song they've ever recorded.
  • "Daydream" from Gish, sung by D'arcy.
  • "Soothe" from Pisces Iscariot. Just a guitar and a sighing vocal from Billy.
  • If "Farewell And Goodnight" from Mellon Collie was any sweeter, it would tuck you in and read you a bedtime story.
• Signature Song: "1979" is easily their signature - though "Today" and "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" are not far behind. To a lesser extent, "Tonight, Tonight", "Zero", "Cherub Rock" and "Disarm".
• Vindicated by History: Corgan predicted that this would happen to Adore, and over a decade after its release, he appears to have been right.
  • Corgan has also mentioned that he regrets having described the album as "electronic", believing that this distorted the way people perceived it, and once commented that he believed that simply referring to it as an "acoustic" album would have caused less trouble (the album only really had one electronica song while the singles retained "1979"'s use of technology.)
  • The band as a whole. They were The Scrappy of alternative music for a while during the '90s for their Arena Rock influences (and Corgan's general dickery didn't help), but are much more positively viewed nowadays.
• Wangst: Billy Corgan is very prone to this in his blogs and interviews. It seeps into the lyrics sometimes, but is generally considered forgivable because of the music.
• The Woobie: Billy Corgan, as he's endured physical and emotional abuse as a child from his stepmother as well as struggling with depression and anxiety as an adult.

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