One Song - The Smashing Pumpkins - Cherub Rock

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Hipsters Unite? This week on One Song, Diallo Riddle and Luxxury are tackling a confrontational track from one of the most successful alt rock bands of the 90’s — “Cherub Rock” by The Smashing Pumpkins. The guys go deep on the early 90’s indie rock scene, band frontman Billy Corgan’s quest for musical family, and the Pumpkins’ complicated relationship with the indie rock community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's song is from one of the greatest bands in alternative rock history and one of the best albums of the 1990s. That's right, Diallo. And if you've seen this band perform live recently, chances are they close their set with this epic rock anthem. That's right. It's one song, and that song is cherub rock by The Smashing Pumpkins. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist Luxury, also known as the guy who whispers. You're laughing already.

I haven't even said the interpolation. Anticipatory laugh. interpolation. I got the bigger laugh this second time. So hey, we're going back. We're putting on our flannel shirts. We are watching Seinfeld in real time. It is the 90s.

And I think we have to just embrace our alternative rockids. That's right. This is the episode where we're talking about. It is an id thing, isn't it? Yeah. It's all id. Yeah. We're talking about smashing pumpkins. And before we dive into the song, let's scale back a bit.

I know that the smashing pumpkins are. huge for both of us. But what music memories do you have of the pumpkins and how have they influenced you? I just want to say this is one of these bands that it was a moment in time that really did a lot of like, I was going to say damage to my psyche, but like it's just impacted me greatly. The sound, the lyrics, everything about them was really important. I'll never forget the first time I heard them. I was a proud member of the subpop singles club, which was the record label subpop that, you know, Nirvana and Mudhoney. And I literally subscribed. Now maker of T-Chi. shirt worn by middle-aged dance.

Exactly. Exactly. Well, at the time, you'd get like a seven-inch single every month in the mail. That's what I got. And Tristessa came, December 1990. It was their first single. And I loved it immediately. Let me play a little bit. This is what I would have heard. Little luxury in 1990.

That's a very cool song. You got that. Your little ears were like, oh, I like this. I like this. This was like, I'm a drummer in this moment, and I'm a drummer in my college band. And I'm hearing those are, that's Jimmy Chamberlain on drums, and I'm immediately a huge fan of Jimmy Chamberlain, the way he opens that song

and is, we're going to get into Jimmy Chamberlain later on the episode, but he's a very special musical influence for me. Usually when you talk Smashing Pumpkins, it's a lot about Billy Corrigan, but we're going to talk about all these wonderful members in the group. D'all, you're also a big Smashing Hempis fan. I have a big Smashing Pumpkins fan when you

said, hey, let's do a Smasy Pumperin's episode. I was like, yes, please. Listen, Siamy's Dream is one of those CDs that you saw in everybody's dorm room if you were a college kid in the 90s. I was there. I saw those CDs. I was more of a melancholy fan, full disclosure.

I saw the album art and I was a meal like, oh, you know, I like today. You know, that was my song off of Siamese Dream, but I was like, let me check out more from this band. And my favorite Smashing Pumpkin story is that I was driving down Sunset Boulevard, like, right after I graduated. And the Virgin Megastore used to sit on the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset. set. Now it's, what is it now? That's before my time, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, like, you know, Virgin Megastore. It's funny how much space CD stores used to take out. Oh, I used to love the Virgin Megastore in New York. That was a big destination. And they had the CD listening stations. You could listen to CDs all day, but I'll never forget they had blocked off the road. And I was like, what's going on here? And I saw a band setting up on the rooftop.

No way. And I seriously, I parked on like Laurel right next to the Laugh Factory. And I walked over and I was like, oh my gosh, it's smashing pumps is on the roof of the Virgin Megastore. And they played this whole big concert with songs from Siamese Dream and Melancholy. And I think a door had just come out. So jealous.

And like we filled the streets. We filled the streets of that big corner. If you've ever been in L.A., that's like a really big corner. Was this like a Beatles, like YouTube thing? I don't know how spontaneous it was. Maybe the word had gotten out. Like it was a pretty huge crowd of people. But like the sun was going down over the hills.

And like Billy and James and Jimmy and Darsen. They were all there. And it was a great. That was when I realized, you know what, my fandom of this band is above some other bands. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're real special band, I agree. That's so cool. Well, I mean, just leaping ahead a little bit, like, when I started making music myself,

so many influences, you know, at the time, there were a handful of things that, like, I knew I was trying to do. And some things that later on, I'm like, oh, I was thinking about this band. Smashing Pumpkins were definitely front and center for me. There was something about the sound being this combination of epic rock bombast, frankly. And then, like, that. The bombast is a big part in this. Not a where we see enough in the... No. I love the unabashedness. It's like, let's put bombast in this. That's what Billy Corrigan...

He wants unabashedness. He wants unabashed bombast. It's a goal of his at a time when that was not what people were doing. It was falling out of favor. It had fallen from favor. And it was an unusual choice. We're going to talk about that a little bit later. But I was also kind of wanting to do with similar thing in San Francisco early 2000s where I was like, you know, there's a lot of indie stuff that was broken beat was happening. and kind of obscure. And I was like, no, I want to like swing for the fences and have these big guitar, crunchy wrist and stuff like that. And I kind of had a similar experience where like my scene didn't really embrace me. San Francisco in the early 2000s was not super kind to luxury. Why were they not embracing? Well, you know, we can get into some theories I have, but I definitely felt some identification with Billy's kind of sensibility. Outsideness. And part of why I wanted to do this song is because it is about this exact phenomenon of like the, the gatekeepers in the indie rock community and the gatekeepers on MTV and his feeling of like screw you guys

like this is the music that's real to me and that's not that's coming naturally and that i want to make even if it doesn't seem cool to you guys yeah i love that i love that he was going at the gatekeepers by the way they were on virgin yes um and i'll say that my very uh my very first record industry job after college um you know my first record label job was at laface my second one was at virgin you know this right after college. And so I actually have a ton of pristine smashing pumpkins. Wait, do you really? I really do. Like I, you know, like the, um, so melancholy was a double CD. So I have like the four vinyl. Are you serious? I'm like, again drooling with envy at Diallo's Smashing Pumpkin

experiences. I definitely have Siamese as a double vinyl because it was a single CD, but they really wanted that 180 gram. Diallo, do you know how much, this is like sort of an obscure kind of anecdote, but like, The moment this record came out was the moment I had held off for years on CDs. I was like, what a garbage technology. Remember long boxes and all that? I hated it. But in this moment, I was like, I was at college and I was like it's, it's, I didn't have

enough room to always be carting around records. And like, I made the conversion with Siamese Dream. Yes. And I regret it to this day that I don't actually have it on vinyl. And I had Gish on vinyl. A big regret in my life is where did that vinyl go? The fact that you have all this vinyl, I'm very, very envied. forget that we ever discussed this, and maybe there'll be something for you come Christmas.

Oh, I do have a birthday coming up. It's true. But listen, Samadry Popkis is literally one of the most successful rock bands of all time. They've sold 30 million albums. This song is off of Siamese Dream. It went four times platinum. Right. And melancholy and infinite sadness, uh, and actually diamond status, which means it sold 10 million or more copies. That is crazy. That doesn't happen anymore.

No, it really doesn't. It was literally like the second they came up with that certification. Yeah. Here comes nasty. Yeah, it's like the ultimate hubris. But people used to pay for art. Smashy Pumpkins has had one number one hit, seven top ten hits. They've been nominated for 11 Grammys, and they won too.

They won 1997 for Bullet with Butterfly Wings, great song. And they won in 1998 for The End as the Beginning as the End. I don't know. The usual choice, yeah. That sounds like they became friends with the Grammy. Yeah. They're like, you've been screwing us for years. Hey, what's song do you want to be?

be nominated for. You got to give us one. Just pick a song. We'll take it. We'll take it home with us. You will win best hard rock performance. It's a fine song, but it's not like one that is in the pantheon. And by the way, all the success, very much deserved by the pumpkins. I mean, if you think about their hits, it's 1979. Bullet with Butterfly Wings, Disarm Today. My own personal favorite, tonight, tonight. And when we were preparing this episode, we had a, listen, we had a vigorous back and forth about which of these songs. that we would do. But, you know, in some cases, we didn't have the stems. Hello, Tonight Tonight. Could not find you anywhere. In other cases, it wasn't necessarily the song that we wanted to discuss. I personally love 1979. I love that song, too.

Yeah, yeah. But, listen, I'll admit. Yeah. And this is one of the things we discussed. It's not the most smashing pumpkin-y spice song of a smashing pumpkin. A little bit of an outlier. It's a little bit of an outlier. Let'sry, help us understand what led to that wonderfully distinct smashing pumpkin sound.

A really unique thing about Billy Corrigan in this moment in 1993 when this record is being made and when this song comes out is that he's bringing his heavy metal background to indie rock, to a post-Nirvana world where heavy metal Judas Priest and Accept and like all rainbow, all of these 70s hard rock bands and Queen and Boston, all of these bands, he's actually aiming to emulate. He is aiming to bring back their bombast and their huge rock guitar. walls of sound and epicness and the voice. All of it is conscious ever to bring something that had been kind of lost in the 80s. It's like a throwback to the 70s. And he's like, the world is ready to hear this again. And it's a real risk because in indie rock circles, like in this Nirvana world, where there's pavement and Sebadoo and Sonic Youth, that is not cool.

Right. And I mean, like, I think you kind of get into what I was going to ask, which is, what makes his sound different from somebody like Soundgarden? Yeah. And that's a great question because I think in Billy's mind, he was thinking the same thing. I think Billy had something about Soundgarden as a band in his mind that he was competitive with them and wondering why they got kind of more indie cred. By the way, subpop band, originally.

Then they got signed to A&M. But in his mind, he was wondering the same thing. How come I can't do what Soundgarden does? One, obviously, distinction is that he doesn't have Chris Cornell's voice, so he can't sing like Chris Cornell did. But I think another thing that I thought about this a lot, I think SoundGuard and was able to inject a little bit of a wink and a nudge of irony, which was a big thing culturally in the early 90s, sure.

Absolutely. And Kirk Cobain would do the same thing. When they would take a whaling guitar solo, it was a little bit of a wink, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. When Billy Corgan takes a guitar solo, there's no, it's without guile. It's like, I'm swinging for the fences. I am Brian May 2.0. I'm Richie Blackmore 2.0.

And I think to a lot of people in that moment in the community, it's like, bro, that's just not cool. You know what's interesting about what you just said is I'm thinking about a song like today. where the lyrics are really positive, but he's clearly in a bad place. You know, today is the greatest. And that is a sarcastic song, actually. So that actually is some irony, sarcasm, whatever you want to call it. So he wasn't anti-irony, but I do get where he wasn't ironic in the way that some of the other bands of this era aren't.

It's so perfect that you brought that song up because Billy tells the story about how that song was actually a turning point in his inner turmoil. And again, this song, Cherabrock, we're going to get very deep into it. It is about this, what I just described. His feelings towards the hipster community. Hipsters unite as he sings. But that was one of the last songs he actually wrote for the album. He was still wrestling with it. Earlier in the songwriting process for Siamese Dream, he writes today,

and he says how that was a moment that he was able to reconcile these opposing forces of coolness and uncoolness that he was feeling about his songwriting. He was recognizing that it just wasn't being accepted. in Chicago's, you know, hipster worlds and MTV's hipster 120 minutes, whatever. They were being played, but he felt some disrespect kind of in his way. But he says about, I found a quote about the song today. He felt that it captured his essence as he, these are his words, a corny boy from fucking Chicago.

He goes, I reached a point where there was a direct conflict between what I was trying to be and who I really was. I was trying to be this person who is cool, eternally rocking. And yet I, here was, I was writing this dumb. song like today, I'd reached a fork in the road. Do I throw this in the trash and try and pursue some kind of ideal that I can't live up to or just accept who I am? And in this song, he does that. And interestingly, to your point, he finds some irony that had been maybe previously lacking from the rest of his work. It starts to be kind of more of a balance with the bombast, which is

unabashed, unabashed bombast. And a little bit of a self-awareness, maybe. seeping in about how it is perceived. And he doesn't care. He's starting to just not care. He's letting go of caring what the gatekeepers think. If it's possible, I want to take a step back and talk about the founding of the group. Billy co-founds the band in 1988 in Chicago with guitarist James Iha. Not too long after that, they recruit a drummer and a bassist. Let me ask you, as an expert of the band, what's the dynamic of the band in these early days?

So I think in the early days, you have to understand that, the band Smashing Pumpkins in Billy's mind has always been kind of an entity that is a band, but to the rest of the world, it mostly kind of seems like Billy and whoever is around, because they're shifting members of the band. We have Darcy on bass and then she's gone, and Melissa Aftermarfer from Whole replaces her, etc. And Jimmy Chamberlain is in the band, and then he is gone, and then he comes back. You know, I will say, you know, this is like during a period where, you know, I'm listening to music constantly, and I, and I, And I know what bands look like.

Like nowadays, like, I'll hear about a rapper for a full year before I ever find out, oh, that's Louisville's hurt. Like, it'll take me some time. But back then, I knew the Smashing Pumpkins. It's ironic. I thought they were, like, one of the most diverse bands of the period. Like, you know, you've got an Asian guy and a cool, you know, girl in the bed. Like, they just seem like more of a mix of people than just, like, five or six white dudes.

My speculation, I've listened to, there's a lot of Billy Corgan interview. footage out there. And there's a lot. He talks about this stuff a lot over the years. And I think there's some things that are consistent in some things that change. So this is me speculating from what I piece together. I think he's always wanted a tribe, a home, because he came from a broken home. Yeah. And he had a very troubled upbringing where his dad, first of all, his parents were divorced when he was three and he was shunted off to his great grandmother and then his grandmother and then his dad got remarried, but his stepmother was abusive. And his mother was not well. So he couldn't really live with her. He has this looking for a homeness in his childhood that really lasts his

entire life until recent days where he's happily married now, so everything ended well. But in the band days, it seems like he's trying to put together a new family, but it's difficult for him to hold on to them. And he's also very controlling. So he will record a lot of music and then kind of replace parts, and we'll be getting into that later, which has the effect of pushing away these family members. So the bandness, I think, feels like a very carefully cultivated thing to build a tribe, to build a family, to be part of something. But just like the scene at large that rejects him, the band, he has this push-pull. And he's back to being alone within the band, not to mention what the scene. Well, I mean, look,

we're not going to sugar-coded. He also has a reputation for being extremely hard to get along with. I mean, but which is the cause and which is the effect is hard to say. That is true. I don't want to push that aside. But, you know, I have a lot of empathy for him. He has such a vision. He had such a sound in mind, and he's also coming from such, frankly, a dark place that he's got a lot to express, and only he knows how to express it. And listen, I can speak from personal experience. Like, without that troubled background, I also know that it is tricky sometimes to, like, navigate between, like, are you my collaborator? Are you the person that's executing my vision? If you are, how do I make you feel good about it and stay? It's really tricky stuff.

And the story of Smashing Pumpkins is, I think, very much Billy wanting a family of musicians, wanting to be in this tribe and it being a really tricky thing from one album to the next, from one year to the next. Yeah, I think what you're saying is true. And there's a lot, there's a lot of quotes out there that back up everything you're saying. Billy's quoted in the LA Times of saying, quote, I don't have the proper indie credentials. I didn't play in some seminal band where five people bought the record. Yeah.

Oh, man. He says, I wasn't a roadie. That kind of rags to Rich's story. And I think you actually have a quote, too, from Rolling Stone. This is from 1993, you know, kind of right when the song is coming out. I'm like the fugitive, running from the one-armed indie rock community. If I continued on the path I was on. In other words, this is this moment where he's making this decision.

Do I keep on trying to win the approval of these people, or do I just do what I want to do, which is big, bombastic rock. If I continued on the path I was on, which was being overly conscious and worried what the indie rock hierarchy was going to think of our new album, we were going to fail. So Billy is a thoughtful, maybe overthinking. person, but obviously it goes into the music and it goes into the lyrics and it goes into the song in a really big way. For me personally, he's an example of somebody who, it's almost like Morrison the Smith's, like I love that music. I don't have to really make my piece with the

man behind the curtain. You don't have to. I think, I think, I actually, it's interesting because I've been recently, I just listened to his more recent interviews and comparing them to the old stuff and he's come a long way. But there's also some questions swirling about his political affiliations, which I haven't quite landed myself. We don't need to get into, but I do think that at the time what he was dealing with was, look, there's this famous song by Pavement,

right? We got to talk about the Pavement song. Okay, let's talk about it. In 1994, Pavement puts out a song called Rangelife, which includes this lyric. I'll play it for you and then I'll read the lyric in case you missed it. Out on tour of a smashing pumpkin's nature

kids, they don't have no function. I don't understand what they mean I could really give a fuck we should have included this in our beef episode you're right it's a beef track that's a real beef track

I mean out on tour with the smashing pumpkins nature kids they don't have no function I don't understand what they mean and I could really give a fuck now this is 1994 pavement being maybe the ultimate like indie rock cred band

and personally speaking I was not a pavement fan like this represented a type of music I couldn't really get behind. I had a friend, a black friend who was really in the pavement. Okay. And got me to, you know, I would listen to it and he would listen to it, but it wasn't quite my thing. It's more lyrics driven.

I mean, musically, it's not really important what's happening in the music. It's not very exciting. It's more coming from like a Bob Dylan tradition. It's more coming from, or Elliot Smith or Leonard Cohen. It's like, the lyrics are while we're here. It's not even melody matters less than music. So I wasn't into it, and pavement was not into smashing pumpkins. And smashing pumpkins, and Billy, I should say,

hearing this song was not very happy himself. The result of this song coming out is, according to legend, he told the Lollapalooz organizers that the pumpkins would pull off the bill. They were going to headline that year if pavement were also on the bill. So he was bitter. He was like, this song really got to, got under his skin.

Never find out about your heroes, everybody. It always strikes me as a little petty when people pull their muscle like that. But here's a good question. You mentioned petty. At the time, what he said in Rolling Stone was, I think that this is Billy Corgan referring to that lyric I just played for you. He said at the time, I think it's rooted in jealousy.

It shows true pettiness, to your point. So who's the pettier one, the one who puts the song out or the one who reacts to the song about them, right? I mean, I'm not even a pavement fan. If he's just being honest in a lyric, then I'm sort of like cool with that. Yeah. But I think. Wait, if someone put out a song saying Diallo, riddial. Oh, yeah, I'm not going to be like, no serious.

Sex him. If you ever have an interview with that guy, There ain't no more one song, you know? I think that that's, I don't love it when artists do that kind of stuff. Like, I think, like, just respond to them in the song, you know what I mean? But, like, and Billy Corgan has a connection to Courtney Love and Whole as well. Can you tell us what that's about? Yes, well, actually, technically not everyone knows this, but Billy Corgan was first to date, Courtney Love.

Yeah, it's true. Yep. And famously, as he's told the story himself, I think he kicked her out, and then she went down the street according to the story he tells and saw a Nirvana show and started dating him, whether it's like literally the same night or whether it's a little exaggerated, but like she basically went from Billy to Kurt. Yeah. And this maybe fuels a little bit of how Billy Corrigan sees the world in this moment because

Nirvana clearly, you know, is the indie darling of 1991 and onward. And rightfully so. And rightfully so. And it should be noted that their first record Gish was produced by Butch Figg. And it came out first. And guess what else Butch Vig was working on in that same time period? I can guess. Nevermind was released just four or five months after Gish, the first Smashing Pumpkins record.

So Billy is feeling maybe left out of something bigger happening to someone that's right next to him. Butch Vig, one of my favorite guys from the 90s. And I'm a huge garbage fan. I think the stuff that he did with Shirley Manson, the crew was outstanding. But Corrigan is, he gets back with Courtney, I believe. And he co-wrote five songs with Courtney. on Hull's album Celebrity Skin, which is one of my favorite.

And listen, I'll admit it, I'll take the heat. I think Celebrity Skin is a great album. No Heat. Malibu. I totally agree. I love that record. I love that song. And I actually remember exactly where I was at.

I was at a party the very first time I heard the title track, Celebrity Skin. Oh, make me over. I'm all I want to be. I just forgot how much I love that sick bass line. My God, it's so good. And also, I love it. But I also hear now so clearly,

how the guy who co-wrote celebrity skin could have also written Bullet with Butterfly Wings. We're tearing up the studio! The music has that effect on us. Can I just say this is not one of my favorite songs, and part of it is because... We talked about this, go ahead.

I feel like, and I've heard in interviews him sort of allude to this corroborate this, I'm pretty sure he wrote this because he thought he was supposed to write it, like he was told to write another hit, not dissimilar, to some of the tarab rock type anthems from Siamese Dream. Because it's very smashing pumpkins by numbers. Like right down to the part where it's just him with no music behind him.

I'm still just rat in a cave. I heard that this was the first song of the melancholy sessions. Ironically, Tonight Tonight, probably my favorite song was written during the Siamese Dream sessions. Oh, really? And he just, he actually, while they were touring Siamese Dream, he like booked some studio time and have the band go in and actually record that song while he had all these ideas running through his head. But I believe that Bullet is the first from Melancholy.

And the last from Melancholy is 1979. And it almost didn't make the album. But when I think it's the producer known as Flood told him, hey, I don't know about this, 1979. It doesn't sound like you guys. You should leave it off. that he saw that as a challenge and went back into the studio

for four more hours, worked on 1979, and then when Flood heard it the next morning, he was like, yeah, I was wrong. You should put this on the album. Great song. It is in my, like, B list of favorites. I don't dislike it.

But again, as a Jimmy Chamberlain fan, as a fan of the drums in this band as much as the guitar, it's a little bit like, man, I wish they'd let them, like, riff on this. In 1979, and I know that we have a lot of listeners. You know, I talked to folks, and when I told them we were doing Smashy Pumpkins, a lot of them were like, 1979.

Listen, we love that song. I do think that we just wanted to do something that felt a little bit more like the band's signature sound, but, like, nobody's taking anything away from it. And by the way, it's their number one song. Oh, yeah. Understandable that you'd want us to break it down. Yes, but we want to talk about Cherop Rock. So Cherop Rock is on the Smasy Pumpkins' second album, Siamese Dream,

released in July of 1993. It was their first single off the album, and that's only because Billy fought the label hard for it to be the first single. That's right. For purely commercial reasons, this might have been one of the times the label was right, because they wanted the first single to be today. Today turned out to be the second single, and today is the single that broke the band big. But the album, Siamese Dream, is a wonderful picture of the band at that moment. I mean, there's so much going on. Corrigan is depressed and suffering from writers block. You've got things happening within the band like James Iha and Darcy are in and out of a romantic relationship. Jimmy Chamberlain is battling a heroin addiction and the whole band is just,

there's a lot of infighting going on. That's right. And in Billy's own words, this is an interview who gave a few years later. He said, this is referring to the moment where they went into the studio for Siamese Dream. They had just come off this tour for Gish, selling out everywhere we go. Everything was cool, fine, dandy, then in his words, suddenly boom, boom, Nirvana. We went from being seen as future stars almost to has-beens. People were saying, well, if you were so good, this would have happened to you. So Billy is in a deep depression, as he said in another interview. I was suicidal, plotting my own death for about two months. Everything you said about the breakups and the heroin, this is a dark, dark moment with a lot of pressure and a lot of confusion. We alluded to the breakthrough, so we've

already kind of with the song today. So he breaks through and then these songs get written and the album is amazing. But in this moment, before they get started on this very long, drawn-out process, they're in the studio for three or four months with like 12, 14 hour days, it's a difficult album to make. But a lot of great art comes out of challenging times. That's all true. And listen, after the break, we will dive into how the song Cherabrock was actually made. And does this song feature James Iha, Darcy, and Jimmy Chamberlain, or not?

Stay tuned for the answer after this. Welcome back to one song. Luxury. Walk us through Cherabrock. Tell us how did this song get made. we mentioned, this is the Siamese Dream Sessions. It's circa 1993, and we are in Atlanta with the band, the Smashing Pumpkins. And the band is there together.

It's all four members. It's Butch Vig, who is the producer. And, yeah, I mean, you can watch some great old interview footage where they are very bored. These are long days. They are tracking guitars. Like, some songs have like 40 guitars in them, like stacks and stacks. They are rehearsing. They're getting many takes of Jimmy Chamberlain playing drums.

It seems very grueling. It seems like this record was a very long laborious laborious laborious nevertheless. It almost seems like Billy Corgan brings you into his family and then tortureship. Maybe, maybe. It's a little bit of a shadow of what he experienced himself. So this song, though, to be clear, it's a 100% Billy Corgan composition. And as we go through the instruments, we'll talk about who actually was performing these parts because it might be a little surprising.

So interestingly, Billy wrote this song pretty quickly. He says, I wrote cherub rock in half an hour. I heard it one day while I was driving up the road. It was one of the last songs I wrote before we did the album. The thing is, there's parts of me that wonder what would have happened if I spent four hours writing writing it and not done something else. So it's interesting, his dichotomy between, like, being somebody who spends hours and hours and hours, like tracking guitars one at a time and getting that perfect sound.

But his songwriting process, it sounds like he aims to be quick, the quicker the better. It is the first song. It opens the album. And it's a pretty epic tune. starting with and kind of based around Jimmy Chamberlain's ridiculously cool drum parts. So he might be my favorite living drummer, and he is a powerful rock drummer, but he's got this incredibly light touch. So his influences when he talks about them and some great interviews out there, he's always mentioning like Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich, you know.

I can tell you see that. John Bottom's in the mix too, but like jazz is a huge part of who he is as a drummer. You can tell. You can tell by his versatility. Yeah. And some of the, and some of the fills that he used. You could totally see that being like, you know, like, and now playing with Paul White, man, here comes Jimmy Chamber. Well, without further ado,

let's listen to some of the isolated drumtracks from Cherebrook. So the first thing I want to play for you, first I'll play the part, and then I will play where it comes from. And then he gets a little more intense, and it does the same thing, but louder.

And he does that John Bonamy kind of fill there. But boom! And Billy Corrigan has gone on the record with how he was inspired, for that part by this. That is by Tor and the Snow Dog by Rush from their 1975 album Fly By Night. So I'll just play for you Cherabrock again with the guitars so you can, you know, having heard Rush, you'll hear the entire piece.

Now listen, just the fact that Billy Corgan is referencing Rush, who might be the like in 1993-92 especially, the least cool band for this group of like his cohort of pavement and Nirana. this is a band that Mudhoney used as an insult against their label mate sound garden saying, you guys sound like Rush. Like, it's the worst thing you can say to anybody. And yet, everyone secretly, especially the drummers in this world, love Rush. Because Rush is one of the great musical bands. And from a drummer's perspective, Neil Peer, is one of the greatest living, well, at the time, living drummers, sadly passed away recently.

But anyway, I think it's quite funny that there's a rush. It's not quite an interpolation, but really cool connection there. And a funny one. A little tongue in cheek. This is part and parcel of the song's DNA, which is about, hey, screw you, gatekeepers. Hey, screw you, hipper than thou hipsters, which is a word that literally he uses in the song. We'll be hearing shortly. So there's that bold rush reference.

And then we have a little more Jimmy Chamberlain love to deliver. Let's hear some more of what he does in this song. He describes what he's doing as a conversation between the hi-hat and the ride. And there's all these ghost notes. It's like the way he thinks about how to make a drum part to me is so, it's so musical, and it's about supporting the song, and it's just a beautiful thing to listen to. I love it. And let's start adding stuff back in so you can hear it in the context of the song.

There's the lightness of touch is what I keep coming back to. How he manages to be heavy and strong and forceful and authoritative as a drummer. And yet there's like lightness going on. There's like an airiness to the high hats being a little open and the ghost notes on the snare. I don't know, man. Just my drummer brain gets so turned on by everything he does. So inspired by it. Absolutely.

And here's the honey part. So I'll play that for you and then I'll add some instruments back in. There's another one of my favorite moments. It's funny because I like that a lot. What do you like about that? I mean, I'll play with some context and let's get into it. I have, by the way, spent many hours of my life playing along to this record, just air drumming along to it.

So I know where every little moment, every fill is. And if I were to try and sit down and play it, you'd be like, that does not sound like Jimmy Chamberlain. you are playing the parts, but you are not playing them the way he does it, which is very interesting. This is just a snare fill. And look, we've come off of an episode recently where we were talking about the Tears for Fears. I mean, it's a drum machine.

But by contrast, because it's a drum machine, the sound is the same. It's just a little bit louder when the fill comes in. D-Dat-Dat-Dat the beginning I've head over heels. Here is by this is the opposite of that. This is a great drummer who's carefully selected his snare. and the snare head and the micing and everything, and the way he plays this snare fill is extraordinarily artful and specific.

It's just a little moment, but it's got so much sauce in it. Yeah, and it definitely adds to the emotion in the song. Oh, absolutely. This is kind of a similar moment. This is, I'll add in the vocals so you can hear where this is. So what's interesting and it's relevant to this point is that in the studio, I'm already kind of given the secret away. but the band performs as a unit of four.

They lay down the drum tracks. That's how this record was made. Jimmy Chamberlain needed, understandably, for their to feel like a band. So they all performed all the songs together. And then they erased all the musical parts that weren't the drums. And then Billy went in and re-recorded those parts. But while this was happening,

Jimmy Chamberlain's musical drumming brain is hearing what is happening in every instrument and reacting to it in a little. way that only a drummer of his caliber can because all the little subtleties of when what the vocals are doing rhythmically and it is enhancing them in some ways giving them space to shine in other ways duplicating the same rhythm maybe so all of these choices are so part of what makes him a very incredible an artful drummer absolutely and specifically a rock drummer you know because i think that You know, we've talked about it on the show. My earliest appreciation for drums was animal from the Muppet Show.

And then it went to Ringo from the Beatles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I got into 808s and drum machines. It's interesting because hearing you talk about the emotion in these drums, it occurs to me, most of my drum appreciation, even as a drummer myself, came from the effect that it gave you, you know what I mean? And, you know, not to beat a dead horse, but I think that when the drum pattern changes a lot, you know, that's something that I get really excited about. Yeah.

But then again, I like that punk. And a lot of times their songs are four and four. Hey, they're both satisfying in different ways. Sometimes there's like a one bar loop or a half bar loop in daft punk or a two bar loop. The satisfaction comes from it being repetitious and it kind of, it's like a drone. It puts you in a trance. I was going to say it's almost, you know, to go back to the black church, like part of the reason those songs were always like that was because. They're trying to whip you up into something.

And then by contrast, this song, by the way, it's not only is the drum part changing from moment to moment because the human drummer Jimmy Chamberlain is playing it, but also the tempo's kind of rushing and slowing down subtly. There's no click track in this. This is played to Jimmy's internal metronome, which during the song kind of gets a little faster and then slows down a little bit.

Jimmy's internal metronome and also Billy's emotional state given where he is in the song, whether he's on the verse or whether he's on the chorus. You know, I love the bass in this song. And I feel like there's a story here because the bass is usually Darcy, is it not? Yeah, in the early 90s, there's this phenomenon of like the female bass player in an otherwise male band. You've got like Kim D.L. in the Pixies. You've got another Kim, Kim, Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth. Oh, that's right. You have, um, Laura. Elastica was, um, I think they had a male drummer and the rest was female.

Yeah. We had Debbie Gouge in My Bloody Valentine was one of two. We have Tina. from the talking heads. There's this sort of legacy of like... Tina's one of my favorites of all the time. Right, right. I think that Billy was kind of wanting that visually, but in the studio, he didn't need it so much. I don't know that Darcy was really giving him what he needed.

Jimmy has explicitly talked about how Darcy's rhythm wasn't really working for him as a drummer. She was a little, like, not where he was in terms of the beat. So they performed in order to get Jimmy's drums down, but then the bass was erased. The Darcy Retsky take was a bit. raced and Billy went in and this is what he played. And just one more thing on this issue, like Billy, like he does with so many things, we have learned on this episode, wrestled a lot

with the decision to replace the bass parts. And in fact, in later years, he expressed regret over what he did by taking them off the track. He said, look, musicianship and technical vision are fine and good, but at some point you cross the line, no matter how good nom you got, you got, you cut away the gut of your band. And he has really wrestled over the years with like how to make these other members of the band feel like they're in a band and not the Billy Corgan experience. And I think he's really got a dynamic of like he wants to control the sound, he wants to control everything, but he doesn't want to control everything. It's a real push pull with him through the entire career of the band. Yeah, yeah, because Darcy wasn't happy. Well, listen, we like this band. Yes. I, even every, every story that

we're hearing makes it sound like it's really hard to work with Billy Corr. Yeah, I think it probably was. And we can probably imagine why James and Darcy and Jimmy, why the band does eventually their own ways. They come and go. And actually, both James and Jimmy are back in the current touring iteration of Spaddy Buckins. You're just like, okay, well, you know, we're not under any illusion of who this, you know, guy is. And he has great ideas.

Yeah. And they know their place. They aren't considered. I hope they know your place. I mean, look, the facts are the facts and they aren't songwriters. so they're not making the untold millions that Billy has made on the publishing. It's tough when one guy has all the publishing and is making a vast sum of money. And you're like, hey, can we go out on tour because I wouldn't mind like paying my rent.

Like that's not to say anybody in this band is suffering like that. But like still, I think we can understand where that makes the conversation is awkward. Yeah, it does. There is a power imbalance. I'll just put it that way. Billy kind of holds all the cards in terms of what happens with this band. But he has been loyal. and loyalty, he's talked on the Howard Stern show about how loyalty,

coming from this broken background, how in him trying to create this family, he does place a lot of importance on being loyal and having loyalty. And the fact that he is currently, literally on tour as we make this episode, with James and Jimmy again. He is really trying to keep this family together. Now with Darcy.

Darcy, unfortunately, is out of the picture. Okay. Yeah, there have been some leaked text messages. You know, it sounds like she's a little bit in a difficult spot recently in her life, but I think Billy has tried to make. it work and for various reasons it didn't. But we do love you, Darcy, if you're out there. Yeah. And if you want to give your side of the story, call us. Tell me about the guitars, because they are such a part of the signature smashing pumpkin sound. Absolutely, my friend.

Well, let's see. Let's start with the pumpkin cord. The song begins with this big wall of guitars, and then on the top of it, this is a big part of the sound of this band, is you will frequently have a big wall of sound, maybe riffing, and then melodically on top, there's something that almost sounds Indian. It almost has this Raga feel to it. Oh, like maybe guitar or something? It sounds, well, in fact, it's funny you should say that because Billy has talked about how he once did this experiment where he played Black Sabbath in one room and Ravi Shankar in the other room. And that actually is a perfect metaphor or an analogy, whatever

the right word is for the sound of the pumpkins. They have this big riffy underpinning. And then on top of it, this beautiful melodic sound, which is coming from basically playing an octave, the same note as an octave up and down the fret. And that's, what we're about to hear. He calls it the pumpkin cord, but he's borrowed it from Jimmy Hendricks, and I'll play, after I play this, I'll play you the Jimmy Hendricks song that I think he was thinking of. And what I'm specifically referring to is that,

duh. So that's a melody, but he's playing it on the octave, so it's two notes of the melody, one lower, one higher, and it just thickens up the sound, and it again creates this kind of Indian Raga feel mixed with, I mean, I think that's what Hendricks is doing. Yeah, I was going to say that sounds very, I can definitely

hear the Jimmy Hendrix influence on that once you isolate it. So this Jimmy Hendrix song uses that same way of creating the melody. It's not uncommon. In fact, both Billy Corrigan says, we got this from Hendrix, but he probably got it from West Montgomery. It's a thing you do on guitar, but it's also a very distinctive sound. And here's a song where Jimmy Hendrix uses it. So Jimmy's doing the same thing.

He's got the octave and he's playing the melody, but it's got a thicker tone and it's got a little Indian association. By the way, who would have thought that West Montgomery was the link between Jimmy Hendrix, mashing pumpkins and Doja Cat? So cool. That's kind of crazy. So cool. And that was Thurstone from the Sun, by the way, from Jimmy. Are you experienced? Yes. Yes. Give us more guitars. So like I said before, this record has some insane overdubs. One of the tricks of recording and mixing a big stack of guitars is you've got to find room for all of them where they just become this big mess.

They're all in the same frequency range. So you have to cut the frequencies and do this and do that. So many, many hours in the pre-pro tool era went into doing. that for this result, which I think was worth it, because it arguably changed the sound of alternative radio. I mean, that just does something to my serotonin. It's great. I'm going to do something that might piss off some of our listeners. It sounds a lot like this to me. I want to fly away. Yeah. I mean, look, you can make fun of Lenny all day. I'm not making fun of Lenny. I love Lenny. Lenny's a hot man Some similarities

Look, I'm just going to say this Riff riffing, riff rock Like crunchy guitars that have catchy riffs meaning The guitar is playing a figure Like a kind of a melodic figure That you walk away humming, right? I think that all goes back to Jimmy.

This goes back to Jimmy, it goes back to like the kinks, I would say, right around the same period of time. Yeah, but specifically, play the part you just played again right before I played the Lini. Just play that part. I mean, like I'm just saying

that I think that Lennie I'm not saying he stole it, guys. Oh my God, I'm so scared. But I do think that, like, there's just, I think everybody, to a certain extent, is chasing Jimmy when I hear that fuzzy guitar that you can, like, totally hum along to. And I don't know that I give it, I don't know if I, I love the Kings.

I don't know if I hear that when I hear the Kings. I definitely hear that when I hear Jimmy. I hear what you're hearing. I think in part, there's some shared chords going on. These are circle of fifth C chords going on. They're in a slightly different order. And if you add to that the sound of the guitar, The fuzz guitar, and then maybe there's maybe a rhythmically similar thing,

although I think the Lenny is a little faster. Look, all of these things evoke a similar, I would say, shared source. I was a shared group of sources, which is they have some shared records in their collection. I'm sure Lenny, they both have late Beatles records. They both have Kings records. The 90s, guys, so there's still retro happening in the 90s. I do feel like in the 90s a lot of groups were going back to the bands in the 60s quite a bit. Well, Lenny certainly is one of those guys, right?

Well, for sure. And like you said, Billy's going back and listening to old bands. I think, you know, they're all listening to old bands in the 90s in ways that I think current bands are not listening to bands in the 60s. So, you know, by the way, the 60s was really having a moment because the Beatles have the anthology. See that he comes out with Free As a Bird and some new material. Austin Powers is in theaters.

I just feel like even some of those garbage songs, they were like redoing, can't seem to make you mine by the seeds. You know, garage and fuzzy sort of like want to be Jimmy. All that stuff was really back in the night. Well, you're right to make that connection because besides the Jimmy Hendrix chord, the prior record, Gish, was very

visually, certainly. And even sonically, there's a lot of psychedelia coming into play there, yeah. And funny that you mentioned it too, because in the solo, which I'll play it for you now, Billy in the liner notes, talks about how part of the influence for this was a different 60s song. And I'll play, I'll play

I'll play you the solo first, and then I'll play you what he alludes to being where he got some of the idea for the solo. Which, by the way, this guitar solo has been, was what at one point ranked number 97 in Guitar Worlds list of the 100 greatest guitar solos of all time. So without further ado, let's play it. I mean, that's only, that's part one of the two-part solo, but like right there, there's some crazy sounds going on there. That is awesome. So cool. So reading from the liner notes in the 2011 reissued this record, Billy says, the solo, quote,

the solo is uncorked down from the gentle glades of Itchiku Park. So this is his wink and nudge to those of us who know the small faces. He's talking about this moment from this song. This is Small Faces, Itchikou Park, 1967. And listen to the sound. He's, I think, referring to the flange sound, which at the time was unusual. They all come out to call on the minds

and listen to have gone with the scene. I mean, that had to blow your brain if you were listening to that, you know, smoking pot, smoking grass in 1967. I still, the sound of a flange is still so exciting to me. Like, that's swirly, druggie sounds. Yeah. You know, like, these are all, these are all some of my favorite things. Because we love to play the parts that you wouldn't notice necessarily in the mix. I've got a few of those really delicious things in the guitars.

Just a couple quick things. I never noticed this until I was in the stems, but right after that guitar solo, little after we get this sexy moment. And basically what that's doing is it's echoing the let me out. So I'll play it in the mix. Weir on the guitar. So that guitar is kind of echoing the... Let me out.

Another little delicious detail that you will forever hear when you listen to the song from now on. That little like... There's another Jimmy Hendrous thing, by the way. That sounds like the beginning of Purple Haze, I think. Yeah. So those are just some really fun guitar sounds. Again, they spent many, many hours coming up with different sounds and tracking layers and layers of guitars. Layers and layers.

What did you say were the number of layers? There was like 60 layers. Well, they were up to 40 on some songs. I don't know how many were on this song, but I hear lots and lots of guitars. No, you can totally. You can totally. Obviously, it would not be smashing pumpkins without the vocals of a certain Billy Corrigan. William Patrick Corrigan.

more than we've learned more than we will ever know about uh billy today now you know his middle name what can you play us from uh billy's vocals that uh will ignite and and excite us let's start from the top freak out and giving doesn't matter what you buy leaving now what's going on there because i think what i hear is him singing one you know, there's one layer where it's just him singing it. Yeah. Kind of like this. Yeah.

And then there's another one's like, it's like, it's just whispers, right? That could be. That could be. I don't have it separated, but I'm hearing what you're hearing. There are definitely some layers in there. Yeah, there's some layering going on there. And he talks about how he likes, like, Ozzy's doubling technique. Because Ozzy has a very distinctive doubling technique.

That was going to be my question. Like, because even if he's not copying somebody, there's obviously like sort of like an approach of a previous artist who he's like, oh, let's do it in that style. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. doubling is definitely a common thing across the board, but I think he specifically liked the way that the Ozzy vocals were doubled, and I think I hear some of that in there. So Billy likes Ozzy and Jimmy. He likes Ozzy and Jimmy.

Ozzy, Jimmy, and Billy. And you can hear him, like, his singing style is, of course, he's got kind of two modes. I don't think, I think he would agree with my assessment that he's not necessarily a technical singer. As he said, as I mentioned earlier, he's not Chris Cornell. to him, honestly. What's that? I said, you're probably dead to him, honestly. Let's keep going.

Let's assume that Billy. But yeah, you're right. There's another, that's like the sort of like verse Billy. And then there's the chorus, but who goes aloud? Yeah. Yeah. And that was a perfect imitation. Like Billy's singing style is, I think, perfect for this band, not Chris Cornell.

It is probably a good thing that he has like an imperfect voice. Like it's, he is straining and he's breathy. And these are characteristics of his personality. and it works. It works for the band. It's one of those things where if you got the most technically proficient,

amazing singer, we always use Shaka Khan as an example. Shaka Khan in Smashing Pumpkins would be a completely different band. Absolutely. It wouldn't have the personality of Billy Corrigan,

Anthony Ketus, like some of these people, well, Anthony Kittes in particular, I feel like anybody can sing like Anthony Kee's. Pretty much. But that's sort of what makes him endearing to the chili pepper fans. It's a good word.

Yeah, it's very approachable. Totally. This isn't something we couldn't all do ourselves. Play some more Billy vocals. This is fun. Well, here's that chorus we were talking about. Who else honey? As long as there's some money. It's a very distinctive singing voice.

I like how he went like minor there. Yeah. The harmonizing definitely gave you sort of like that fun, dark appeal. Yes, yes. And there's layering. You can tell that there's a low octave and a high octave he's doing in there. I love the way it all comes together. It all comes together.

That's the magic of music like this. When you hear a vocal, isolated like that, you're like, I'm not sure what this is attached to. But it worked with those major guitars and jimmy on drums. This is a perfect match of all these sounds. Look, let me play for you. This is one of my favorite lines that probably hooked me into the song because in the moment it was happening.

And then as I mentioned later on in life, this like battle for the gatekeepers versus me. Like, the gatekeepers aren't accepting me. What's going on? This is the line. Hipsters Unite Come alive for the big fight To rock for you

By the way Hipsters was not It doesn't mean what it means today Like I feel like post 2003 electro-clash Like hipster became ironically Something of a cool thing

Like that you kind of wanted to be And it, you know But Back the 90s I feel like hipster was definitely pretty much uniformly pejorative. Well, it's funny you said that too, because at this time, the word hipster to me, I first heard around this time when I visited my friend at University of Chicago, who himself was telling me about how the scene in that area was like there's a suppressive scene.

There's a band called Urge Overkill, one of my favorites. And they were the absolute cool kids. And as you, as fans of music of that era, I remember, Liz Fair did her exile on Guyville album about the hipster. of Chicago. And my understanding from the inside was that urge overkill was part of this group that she was railing against on this album.

And the word hipster came into my vocabulary in Chicago. So it's just interesting to like listen back and be like, you're right. In 1991, the word hipster. Words don't mean the same when he's singing it as it would have meant in 2005 or even 2024. It's music scenesters who are opinionated

and judgy and keeping you down. In defense of who there's an orthodoxy. and everybody in the music scene is judgy. Like, these guys think these guys are too pomm and these guys think these guys are underground and can't sell five records. So everybody's kind of pointing. Yeah, that's Spider-Man meme. The punk rock has this real lineage of orthodoxy.

Like, I should say, post-sex pistols punk rock started to codify. There are rules. You can do this, but not that. And then there's little scenes like the DC scene and the like. There's like a million sub-genres. Yeah. There's a lot of rules. And I think Billy was like, I don't know these rules.

and I'm just making the music that I like. But he's being judgy too. He's judging about the judges, though. I love your Billy defenses, but the more you talk about him, the more I'm like, no, he's kind of, it's like that thing where like you rail against corruption and then you join the system and then you too become corrupt. But that is neither here nor there. I hear what you're saying, and you're right, you're giving me something to chew on.

And that's what I appreciate you in our friendship. That's why we do the show. Well, look, this band has been super successful. Their songs have been used in many movies and TV shows, including the HBO series Girls, which used today. And The End is the beginning is the end, which was in the, I think, essential Batman movie, Batman and Robin from 1997. Everybody's favorite Batman. Shout out to Clooney. It was also featured in Guitar Hero 3.

Right, which is a big thing because these video games introduce a new audience to the band to the song. But, you know, just speaking really quickly about visuals in the band, I don't think you can talk about Smashing Pumpkins without talking about their music videos. Yeah, some great music videos. Their music videos are outstanding. Indelibly much. From roughly this period forward, first off, 1979, I think one of the most beautiful lyrical music videos, you know, he was literally like...

Nostalgia. Yeah, it's nostalgic. And they're supposed to be driving around, like, suburban Chicago, and yet you can see the Hollywood Hills in the background. So it's that classic thing where people try to shoot L.A. for somewhere else. And, of course, Billy's in the backseat of the car and the other members of the band show up in various scenes. But I want to pay special attention to Tonight Tonight because this video had a huge effect on me. The directors of both 1979 and Tonight are Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Ferris.

They were on Mr. Show with Bob and David, one of my favorite shows of all time. they direct, you know, amazing material to this day. And also, uh, the puppetry in Tonight Tonight is by a guy named Wayne White. And he is a genius. He won three Emmys for his work on both the set and the puppets of wait for it, Pee Wee's Playhouse, which if you know anything about me, there are a few pieces of art of any kind that mean more to me than Pee Wee's Playhouse. I mean, Paul Rubin's rest in peace, you are a sweet, sweet soul.

All time. Yeah. Tonight, tonight, you know, when they saw. the album art for melancholy. Dayton and Ferris were like, why don't we make this video the way that they made early silent films? So that's why it looks the way it does.

And it's in my top three. And I don't even know what else is in my top three. But this video is in my top three. And they shot it like those early silent films. And if you think about those early silent films being made, like these are the earliest moving pictures. That's like the beginning of the 1900s.

This video comes out at the end, essentially, of the 1900s. So it's a perfect book in some ways of what pop culture, you know, starts off as at the beginning of the century and where it ends up at the end of the century. It's just an amazing video. And I even say just as like a writer and just as a human, like it's such an emotional song. Like, you know, it starts silent. It flares up.

And then you've got lyrics like, we'll crucify the insincere tonight. You know, the indescribable moments of our life tonight. The impossible is possible tonight. It's such a perfect opener for an album and for a double album experience. It's like a stage, welcome to our show. Welcome to our play a little bit, right? It's just one of those songs where, you know, if I'm in the right mood and that song starts off. And those soaring strings, just everything in that song just worked really right for me.

So I would be remiss if we did an episode about Smashing Pumpkins where I didn't mention that song, those lyrics, which I think are just wonderful. Like, what do you believe is the legacy of Cherabrock? on the Smashing Pumpkins. Look, for me, Chera Brock was, and the Smashing Pumpkins and Siamese Dream. This record in this moment, it's really important to me personally for all the reasons we talked about today. It, like, made an impression on me that this person wanted to make a sound even if it wasn't the cool sound of the moment. That's a great message. And I hope that resonates to this day. Obviously, the landscape has changed in the music industry. But I think this idea of like, you have an idea in your head, but you're not sure if it's cool. That's pretty

universal. That feels pretty timeless. So when I think about this record, there's the sonics of it, which these big guitars always have been talking about the sound of Billy Corrigan, the band itself and their legacy. That's obviously a big part of this song. And it's, to answer your question, it's legacy. But I also think this message is a really interesting one. And part of why I wanted to do the song was to remind people of what Billy was trying to say. Look, I think the line, beware all those angels with their wings glued on. He's just talking about how like you think that this is going to change your life if you cowtow to what people want you to do. But it really won't. Look what's inside and do what's true to you. So I think that message still resonates for me.

I like that a lot. Okay, luxury, it's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gym with you, the one song nation and with each other. Today I'm going to go first. And my one more song is SR Smoothies Inside of You. This is a song I used to play often. and unfortunately I don't think that it's one of those songs that's made the transition from vinyl and CDs to MP3. So you might have to go digging for it, but it's called Inside of You, Parentheses, Ogu 2040 Remix. I found it on YouTube. This is our smoothie inside of you. Very slow build, but trust me, by the time you get to the end, you'll be like, oh, I know why he chose that song.

And it also has a lot of cool drum changes that come in as well. Awesome. For my one more song, I'm just thinking about Rush, and I'm thinking about Billy Corgan in the late 70s, early 80s. I'm just picturing the man listening to this song, thinking about his alienation, because this song moved me when I was a young, alienated, disaffected youth. It's subdivisions from Signals, 1982, classic song about being lonely as a kid. Be cool or be cast out. You know, that message really resonates when you're 13. I think everybody. Just like Billy Corrigan, who also taps into that part of our brain, will crucify the insincercery tonight. As always, if you have a song, you want to suggest for one more song, you can find us on TikTok or Instagram. You can find me on TikTok at Diallo Riddle or on Instagram at DIA-L-L-O.

That's right, on Instagram at Diallo. And I am luxury on TikTok. That's L-U-X-X-U-X-U-X. And Instagram, you can find me just the L-U-X-U-X-U-R-Y part. You don't need to add the X-X at the end. You can also find us on YouTube. these days. Search one song podcast on YouTube and you can see our lovely faces as well as like some visual clips to go along with these. Complete episodes. Yeah. If you like the podcast, go rewatch it with looking at us this time. Yeah,

the entire episodes. And if you've made it this far, I think that means you like the podcast. So please do not forget to give us five stars, leave a review and share with someone you think might like the show because it really helps keep it going. All right, luxury. Help us in this thing. Well, I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter and musicologist luxury. And I'm actor-writer-director, sometimes DJ, D'Ello Riddle. And this is Wenzong. We will see you next time.