3 Gut-Wrenching Ballads by The Smashing Pumpkins

The Smashing Pumpkins helped define alternative rock in the 1990s. With a heavy dose of Gen X angst, front man Billy Corgan, along with Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, voiced a frustration and alienation that many felt at the time. But not every song needed to be loud to be powerful, as Corgan proves on these gut-wrenching ballads.

“Disarm”

In the 1990s, Corgan often expressed his rage through crushing riffs like “Cherub Rock” and “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”. But in “Disarm”, he describes a tumultuous relationship with his parents. Instead of raging with volume and distortion, Corgan crafted a gorgeous ballad that’s gutting in its sheer beauty. Backed by swelling orchestration and a relentless acoustic guitar figure, his voice rises with the intensity of a child tormented by endless disappointment.

I used to be a little boy,
So old in my shoes.
And what I choose is my choice,
What’s a boy supposed to do?
The killer in me is the killer in you, my love,
I send this smile over to you.

“Soma”

“I’m all by myself / As I’ve always felt,” Corgan announces in “Soma”. A breakup inspired the track, but it also works as a metaphor for anything we use to hide from reality. “The opiate of blame is your broken heart,” he says as the narrator and his partner wallow in pain. The track begins like a whisper, before the full force of Corgan’s band explodes in a wall of grunge amid a disintegrating relationship. Then Corgan burns a furious guitar solo as Jimmy Chamberlin echoes his anxiety with unyielding drum fills.

Close your eyes and sleep,
Don’t wait up for me.
Hush now, don’t you speak,
To me.

“Tonight, Tonight”

When The Smashing Pumpkins released its 1995 masterpiece, Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, it arrived at the apex of alternative rock’s cultural dominance. In “Tonight, Tonight”, Corgan sings about fading youth and how we can only move on if we leave something behind. The album, a 28-track epic, remains the Chicago band’s commercial and creative peak. And “Tonight, Tonight” feels like the realization of losing something special even while it’s still happening.

And our lives are forever changed,
We will never be the same.
The more you change, the less you feel.

Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic