The Smashing Pumpkins

While grunge was the key musical movement of the 1990s, some of the decade’s most interesting bands incorporated a much more diverse set of influences than just hard rock and punk. Perhaps chief amongst these was Billy Corgan’s group The Smashing Pumpkins.

Billy was the son of a jazz guitarist whose first band was a goth metal outfit. There’s a hint right there of the eclectic styles Corgan deployed on Smashing Pumpkins albums. Yes, some goth traces remain, but also dream pop, psychedelic rock and, later, electronica. The band’s breakthrough came with their second album, Siamese Dream (1993) and was consolidated with the massively ambitious two hour epic Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness (1995). For many, these two albums define the Nineties.

Into the twenty-first century the membership of The Smashing Pumpkins shifted and changed regularly, though 2016 saw a partial reunion of the 'classic' line-up. Billy Corgan himself has continued to write music. Atum, released in 2023, is an ambitious sequel to the much loved Mellon Collie.