Return to Edin: BILLY CORGAN on SMASHING PUMPKINS’ wild new album

[Ram27]

https://www.revolvermag.com/feature/...ori-mhori-mei/

Actually, I just ran into Reba [Meyers] from Code Orange at the hotel we’re staying at. I worked with them on their last record and co-wrote a couple things with them. And I mean, they're super fucking heavy — a level of heaviness we couldn't have even imagined when we were playing in '94. You can try to be heavy like that, or you can try to find something that's more sublime and maybe shadowy. I think that's where we've gone on this record. It's not the heaviness of youthful desperation, because that's just not where we're at.

weird how the heaviness of youthful desperation sounded way more sublime and mystical and textured and beautiful vs the heaviness of being 60 and having expensive equipment

Can you tell us about adding wrestling maneuvers to the Smashing Pumpkins’ live show? What’s it like to have someone throwing down a neckbreaker in the middle of a song?

can you tell us what you hit your head on to make you add wrestling maneuvers to the Smashing Pumpkins’ live show?

[Ram27]

You said something interesting in your Carnyland series about the stakes of staging a wrestling show: “This is either going to be a big success or it's going to be an absolute mistake.” Is that a maxim you've also lived by through your work with the Smashing Pumpkins?
You know… that's a question I've never been asked. How can I tell you the honest version of it? When I make a challenging record, I'm well aware that it's a challenging record. I'm not making that record to lose, but I also accept that I may not win in that moment. I would like to tell you in a sort of an emo way that it is this kind of desperate, “all or nothing” thing, but that's not the way I've operated. And collectively, we have confidence that over time our musical decisions get borne out.

For example, when Jimmy and I came back in 2007 to put out Zeitgeist, it was very poorly received. Everybody wanted us to make Siamese Dream 2. Instead, we made this very primitive, brutish metallic record about the failure of Western culture. People said the record was way too dark and dystopic, and they didn't like the vision of America that I was painting.

Well, here we are 17 years later, and I think I was pretty accurate with where we were going collectively. That's not a political statement. It's to say that whatever was going on between technocracy and globalism — this idea that there's going to be this new way of running the world that doesn't necessarily ******* national sovereignty the way it used to be — I mean… I pretty much called it.

I got called a conspiracy theorist. Now, it looks pretty tame. I called my shot like Babe Ruth pointed at the center of Wrigley Field and then hit it out of the park. Now people really like the record. They're constantly asking us to put it back up, because it's not on streaming services currently.

So yeah, I don't play to lose… but I don't necessarily play to win each round in the current culture, either.

to be fair i think he has been very consistently proven right in the long run. i don't understand why you'd want to sound primitive, brutish, or metallic. like i get lofi but ZG was the worst of both worlds

[run2pee]

Pretty good interview until the part about globalist technocracy vs babe Ruth and hitting parks out of the ball

[VoxUpDoc]

Revisionist history about Zeitgeist.

Beyond pictures of Paris Hilton in the promo and a track called Doomsday Clock, the lyrics say absolutely nothing that would lead you to where Bill claims it was pointing, and it was rejected for how it was mixed, the vocals + tracklisting decisions. The aesthetic was just a poor man’s American Idiot.

He acknowledged the mix was unpopular back in 2011. But now he’s pretending like a snake oil salesman, that it was due to being ahead of his time or whatever. If it’s so good why isn’t it on streaming then, Willie?

At peast admit it was the mix and attempt to fix it with a reissue.

[New Art Rioter]

I still can't decide if there's a sense of irony with the whole thing being called Zeitgeist in relation to how the band was back then

Like, here's a band attempting an audacious comeback who fell out of grace quite badly in 98-00 and half of them are now MIA. Is it quite knowing and giving a nod to that? Or is it trying to manifest a new reality for the band in which they are leading a cultural charge again? Or third option, is it just a political thing about a vague sense of doom in America. Maybe all three, who knows

[T&T]

I don't know anyone who thinks of zeitgeist as "dark and gloomy"
I found the top end extra sparkly - I don't know if that's a nod to "going deaf", but it was a bright sounding album (And the live shows were SUPER crisp and bright in the top end)

[eviltimeban]

I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of casual fans didn't even know the meaning of the word "zeitgeist". Is it like "poltergeist"?

Actually Poltergeist would've been a better title.

[run2pee]

Originally Posted by New Art Rioter

I still can't decide if there's a sense of irony with the whole thing being called Zeitgeist in relation to how the band was back then

Like, here's a band attempting an audacious comeback who fell out of grace quite badly in 98-00 and half of them are now MIA. Is it quite knowing and giving a nod to that? Or is it trying to manifest a new reality for the band in which they are leading a cultural charge again? Or third option, is it just a political thing about a vague sense of doom in America. Maybe all three, who knows

It was a transparent attempt to piggback the wild success of american idiot, clearly

[houseofglass11]

We already knew where the world was headed in 2007. The post-911 landscape quickly became the corporate hellscape oligarchy that we are still in today. So sorry, he’s not some pioneer for making the observation we were all making already. Radiohead was mining that territory long before him too.

[T&T]

radiohead even released an album for free before SP

[VoxUpDoc]

Originally Posted by T&T

radiohead even released an album for free before SP

Machina 2 released 7 years before In Rainbows

[run2pee]

Originally Posted by T&T

radiohead even released an album for free before SP

Originally Posted by VoxUpDoc

Machina 2 released 7 years before In Rainbows

[ninsp]

People didn't like Zeitgeist because the vocals were shit and the production is unacceptable. Everyone has been saying since 2007 that the songs are good, lmao revisionist history my delusional bald lord

[themadcaplaughs]

Originally Posted by VoxUpDoc

Revisionist history about Zeitgeist.

Beyond pictures of Paris Hilton in the promo and a track called Doomsday Clock, the lyrics say absolutely nothing that would lead you to where Bill claims it was pointing, and it was rejected for how it was mixed, the vocals + tracklisting decisions. The aesthetic was just a poor man’s American Idiot.

He acknowledged the mix was unpopular back in 2011. But now he’s pretending like a snake oil salesman, that it was due to being ahead of his time or whatever. If it’s so good why isn’t it on streaming then, Willie?

At peast admit it was the mix and attempt to fix it with a reissue.

This. He cannot even get his own stories straight. Similarly, he has gleaned on to this story that he removed Zeitgeist from streaming servces because of fan reaction, but I know in 2014/15 he talked openly in those pre-show Q&As he did that the reason for pulling it off streaming had to do with proving a point to the record label. I can't be bothered to actually find the video, but I distinctly remember that.

[GreenDogGlynis]

Yeah, that stuff Billy said about Zeitgeist is just made up. It's all vague. He says he predicted something but he didn't say what is happening now or what he said then to predict it. No one could listen to Zeitgeist and hear an actual take on modern times and where we're going. They're rock lyrics

[run2pee]

Clowns in my shower
Chicken in my heart

[run2pee]

Labyrinth milk syringe
Zebras on a megaphone

[T&T]

Originally Posted by VoxUpDoc

Machina 2 released 7 years before In Rainbows

'released"? I think you don't know what that word means.

[Shadaloo]

There should be a new thread for ondescipherable parody lyrics. It's been too long since the jackals licked their balls

I'd love you to follow a star tuned to babaloo

[Disco King]

"People couldn't handle us because we were too real for them."

[dustrocck]

Originally Posted by VoxUpDoc

Revisionist history about Zeitgeist.

Beyond pictures of Paris Hilton in the promo and a track called Doomsday Clock, the lyrics say absolutely nothing that would lead you to where Bill claims it was pointing, and it was rejected for how it was mixed, the vocals + tracklisting decisions. The aesthetic was just a poor man’s American Idiot.

He acknowledged the mix was unpopular back in 2011. But now he’s pretending like a snake oil salesman, that it was due to being ahead of his time or whatever. If it’s so good why isn’t it on streaming then, Willie?

At peast admit it was the mix and attempt to fix it with a reissue.

100%.

He's making it out to be like a Bad Religion album, yeah That's the Way and Bring the Light really made me understand how our democratic systems are breaking down

[AveryLoren]

Wow, for once I agree with the Net4ya community. I am a big fan of the actual songs on Zeitgeist, but it was just a "late in the game" cash in on American Idiot and what System of a Down were doing a few years earlier. By 2007 the "America's socially/economically doomed" trope was overused. Hell, I'd say by 2006 it was played out.

[paranoid]

the only songs that really point to that theme are doomsday clock and united states, right?

Starz was more about the vapid celeb culture of the time.

[themadcaplaughs]

Originally Posted by paranoid

the only songs that really point to that theme are doomsday clock and united states, right?

Starz was more about the vapid celeb culture of the time.

For God & Country would be the only song on the entire album (in any format) that could be read as having any sort of explicit political bent, but even that is voiced at the highest possible level without making any real definite statement. I supposed United States could be seen as approaching that territory, but it really does not make any message in its limited lyrics. Like you said, I suppose Starz could be seen as a comment on celebrity culture. To the extent anything else could be seen as political, it could be seen equally in a non-political light.

[T&T]

Radiohead were the first to make a dark and gloomy subversive political record.

[VoxUpDoc]

Originally Posted by T&T

'released"? I think you don't know what that word means.

Released inside your dad last night. Arf.

Originally Posted by T&T

Radiohead were the first to make a dark and gloomy subversive political record.

Yeah Radiohead were the first band to ever release free music and also be aware of what politics is.

Famously, popular musicians had nothing to say during the Vietnam war, for example.

[Disco King]

I remember when the Linkin Park guy died, and some coworker who really liked them telling me that they were the first band to write songs about really serious topics that nobody else was singing about at the time.

Like, okay, even though the band isn't for me, I'm not enough of a snob to shit on anybody for liking them. But I really wondered how limited her reference pool of musical history was for her to think that nobody had ever written a song about depression until 1997.