25 years ago today, on October 23, 1995, the Smashing Pumpkins released their double album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.
This was only their first studio album after their breakthrough album, Siamese Dream (1993), and the scope was daunting. 2 discs. 28 songs. Over 2 hours.
People always say a double album should've been cut down to a single album. But there's almost nothing on Mellon Collie that I would've like to see cut. It isn't perfect — maybe they could've replaced the weakest song on each disc with a couple outstanding B-sides. The Smashing Pumpkins have never been perfect. But this album achieved something nothing else in the '90s did. It feels like both an exciting culmination of the alternative rock explosion of the early to mid-'90s, and a poignant goodbye before rock would take a mostly unfortunate turn in the second half of the '90s.
Mellon Collie had several hits, but what makes this album so amazing is that even if you took off all the hits, you'd still be left with more than a whole album's worth of great material.
First, some of the hits:
"Tonight Tonight":
"Bullet with Butterfly Wings":
"1979" (the band's biggest hit and a new direction for them at the time):
Now here are some of the other songs. It's unfathomable to me that these could be seen as "album tracks" or "deep cuts," instead of highlights from the album and band.
"Galapogos":
"Thru the Eyes of Ruby":
"Porcelina of the Vast Oceans":
"Muzzle":
"And I knew the silence of the world…"
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