Quote:
Originally Posted by CrabbMan
It's a couple years down the road, did it grow on you? If you listen now, are there any emotions attached to it?
|
I essentially lost all faith in Billy and the Smashing Pumpkins name after hearing
Monuments. I was one of the relatively few people who actually liked
Zeitgeist and originally liked
Oceania, but the lack of quality found in
Monuments pretty much forced me to re-access how I felt about Billy's abilities.
Hearing Billy during the promotional campaign for the album say how he'd grown as a songwriter and how he felt
Monuments was a batch of "really strong songs" and hearing him talk about how he was deemed a musical genius in the Chicago school system as a child made me want to vomit as
Monuments has three of the worst songs Billy's ever written in "One and All (We Are)", "Run2Me" and "Antihero".
It became very clear to me during this time that at best Billy's been stagnant as a songwriter throughout his career as he follows the same tropes he's been using for decades (writing the same kind of songs, nonsensical lyrics, titles that have little, if any relevance to the song, etc.) and it's just abundantly clear that he's overconfident in his abilities and has an incredibly warped vision of himself and the quality his work. I guess in his mind that having an album without guitar solos changes the formula but in fact it just made the album sound like a half-assed affair.
I honestly feel that he should have called the album
Troll cuz that's certainly what it feels like: Him trolling on his fans. Which is what he's been doing since he revived the Pumpkin name in 2005.
Essentially
Monuments is to me what
Zeitgeist is to many other SP fans in that it really turned me off from the Corgan brand. Don't get me wrong, I
want to have good SP music... it's just that the vast majority of
Monuments ain't good music, and keep in mind, there's only nine songs on the album.