Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness
| The Smashing Pumpkins
Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is the third studio album by American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins, released on October 24, 1995 in the United Kingdom and a day later in the United States on Virgin Records. Produced by frontman Billy Corgan with Flood and Alan Moulder, the 28-track album was released as a two-disc CD and triple LP. The album features a wide array of styles, as well as greater musical input from bassist D'arcy Wretzky and second guitarist James Iha.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Ppcorn
With Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, though, any songs you might consider filler, are still maintaining an atmosphere that is consistent throughout, despite any variation in genre. I think that’s the biggest accomplishment. And while it is divided into a day half and night half and the themes are all meant to be cohesive, it is not a concept album at all. There’s not necessarily a story holding it together, but I’m sure most of us imposed our own tragic story on to its emotional frame. That’s brilliant. And now that it’s 20 years old, I wonder how the next generation will take this album in an era of singles.
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Sputnik
The Smashing Pumpkins third album is by far their most ambitious effort, with some truly brilliant songs. Unfortuneately, some filler drags it down, but overall a great album.
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IGN
The Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was perhaps the most influential album of the 1990's, dwelling in the ranks of other such revolutionary albums like Nirvana's Nevermind. As the band's magnum opus it single-handedly changed the face of Alternative Rock. That said, it's not just music, but a work of art. Spend the twenty-five dollars. Heck, spend fifty and get ripped off. Just don't miss this album. It won't be repeated.
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Ultimate Guitar
The band has many different sounds on this album and all of them are good. There a re few new styles not featured on previous albums and I'm glad they're there. I really like the opening track, a piano ballad. Very different to most of their other stuff. The last tracks Farewell and Goodnight features all the members singing as is one of my favourites (I have 28 from this album). It is mainly rock with songs like zero, here is no why, jelly belly, bodies etc. but some sound a bit 'odd' like "Where Boys Fear To Tread". There are some other songs which I was unsure of styles from the accordion tunes of "We Only Come Out At Night" to the beautiful "Thirty Three". The song 'X.Y.U.' is probably the craziest song on the album featuring mumbling screams of random sounds by billy. The song 'Lily' sounded quite country and western-ish to me. Overall lots of sounds that are an innovation.
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Bbc
Mellon Collie is no masterpiece, but its ambition is clearer than anything else Corgan has ever been involved with. It’s the grandest of Pumpkins gestures, expensive and infuriating and inspirational – and just occasionally capable of tossing the listener around like a ragdoll.
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Seattle Pi
In 1995, Billy Corgan's dream of becoming a rock star finally came true. His band The Smashing Pumpkins hit the topper-most of the popper-most with the release of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness that year. It changed everything for them, and the title becomes more ironic as the years tick by. Mellon Collie represented an artistic and commercial peak for the Chicago-based foursome; the infinite sadness would follow soon enough.
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The Quietus
The Mellon Collie album itself has aged far better than many of its peers. The sheer breadth of the material is staggering, few records can find room for proggy epics like 'Thru The Eyes Of a Ruby', the metalcore “rat in a cage” snarl of 'Bullet With Butterfly Wings', which sounds like nothing else of its time, the New Orderish clockwork pop of '1979' AND the joyous orchestral rush of 'Tonight Tonight'. The double album format allowed Corgan and co to be every version of themselves. This was the heaviest they'd ever been, the gentlest they'd been, the most out-there, the rawest, the most sonically polished, the most shamelessly pop. It pushed the extremes of their sound, using up everything they had to the point that 1998's follow up album, Adore, had to redesign the band from the ground up. The remaster gives it a little more sonic punch, but if you've got MCIS already and have no interest in tinkering under its star shaped hood it's probably not essential you update it.
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Music Stack
It often happens that an artist will overreach in an attempt to diversify their sound. This could have been the case with Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but Corgan and co. have hit their marks with precision. This double-CD was nominated for six Grammy Awards, proving songs such as "1979" and "Tonight, Tonight" had power enough to charm the mainstream.
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The Firenote
I will totally admit that I let out a somewhat disapproving sigh when I first received this massive 5 CD box set of Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness from The Smashing Pumpkins. Not because I did not think the album deserves such a bold release, as it now is celebrating a Diamond certification selling status, but to even hardcore fans this set is a monstrosity. I know that this album was colossal from the very day Billy and the crew started to work on it but now in 2012 you get an extra 64 tracks of previously unreleased material and alternate versions of Mellon Collie era songs. Overwhelming? Yes. Unnecessary? Probably. Waste of Time? 100% no way!
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Clash
A hugely ambitious project that could so easily have fallen into disregard for its sheer pomp and dramatic weight; it was very much Corgan’s creation, although James Iha’s contribution should not be underscored, despite the rejection of most of his own material. The epic opus of the final project was a multicoloured mammoth, with the band broadening their instrumental scope significantly, using both strings and piano to great effect throughout. Whilst there is a clear journey of imagery on the album, Corgan denies that it was a concept album, merely a tale of two halves. The diversity of material is hugely commendable: the heavily orchestrated melodrama of ‘Tonight Tonight’, the fragile beauty of ‘Galapogos’, the compelling charm of ‘1979’, the hard-driving self-loathing of ‘Zero’ and the sheer brutality of ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’. An exhausting and thoroughly absorbing set.
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Pitchfork
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was one of the most generous records of the 90s. Smashing Pumpkins took it upon themselves to make a record that only teenagers could love and for many it was the only one they needed. This mega-deluxe box set pads the original with an additional 64 tracks. Rating:
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The Guardian
Mellon Collie deserves its success. It’s one of the most varied, far-reaching rock records of the last 30 years, moving from gentle lullabies to heavy metal epics via electronic pop and razor-edged alt rock. Smashing Pumpkins fans used to the sonic sheen of Siamese Dream, or the screaming, muddy fury of recent single Bullet With Butterfly Wings, pressed play on Mellon Collie to find an instrumental piano ditty, followed by the swelling strings and glorious, sweeping pomp of Tonight Tonight. It’s three songs in before you hear a distorted guitar, though when it comes, on the thunderous intro to Jellybelly, it’s worth the wait. Still, it was a massive gamble to assume fans raised on Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, Metallica’s Enter Sandman or the Pumpkin’s own Cherub Rock would get that far.
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Billboard
Released 20 years ago (Oct. 24, 1995), the double LP is damn near infinite, what with its 28-track, 1:21:39 runtime, but the funny thing is, it’s not that melancholy. As much as Mellon Collie established Corgan as the premiere whiny bastard of the alt-rock era, the album is more hopeful -- with intermittent moments of rage -- than it is pensively sad. After a piano intro, the fanciful, string-laden “Tonight, Tonight” sets up a collection of tunes that aren’t united so much by a storyline, but by Corgan’s confusion, anger, defiance and optimism.
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All Music
With Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the band turns in one of the most ambitious and indulgent albums in rock history. Lasting over two hours and featuring 28 songs, the album is certainly a challenging listen. To Billy Corgan's credit, it's a rewarding and compelling one as well. Although the artistic scope of the album is immense, the Smashing Pumpkins flourish in such an overblown setting. Corgan's songwriting has never been limited by conventional notions of what a rock band can do, even if it is clear that he draws inspiration from scores of '70s heavy metal and art rock bands.
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NPR
It recently got a deluxe makeover, but Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was born grand. The Smashing Pumpkins' 1995 opus, reissued this week as a massive collector's box full of outtakes and new artwork, did everything at double scale — two hours of music on two CDs, whose themes of day and night hinted at greater statements about life and death. It was a commercial and creative peak for Billy Corgan and his bandmates: Built to be a classic, it turned out to be a monument.
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Udiscover
Full of “nihilism, sentimentality and epic hope”, ‘Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness’ remains The Smashing Pumpkins’ most vital release.
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COS
Billy Corgan once dubbed The Smashing Pumpkins’ double LP Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness “The Wall for Generation X.” Despite the potential audacity and bombast in that Floydian comparison, music writers, either out of prolonged laziness or gradual acceptance, are still returning to that description two decades later. And it fits. We enter Corgan’s sprawling, 28-song opus through a melancholy piano instrumental and exit clinging to a lullaby sung by all four Pumpkins. In between, we find nods to the past (“Jellybelly”), hints at the future (“Love”), and several songs that feel at once timeless and inextricably rooted in that moment. Emotionally, Mellon Collie runs the gamut from disenchanted and distrusting to cautiously optimistic and sweet. It’s the Pumpkins album that aspires to be everything to everyone and nearly gets there.
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Rate Your Music
If Mellon Collie contained only the songs in the 'good' section it would be worth 6 stars. If it contained only the songs in the 'bad' section it would be worse than Kilroy Was Here. If it contained only the songs in the 'okay' section it would be really short.
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Rolling Stone
Although Mellon Collie clocks in at more than two hours, it’s one of the rare epic rock releases whose bulk is justified in the grooves (it certainly beats the comparable length of, say, the Use Your Illusion records by Guns n’ Roses, which were marketed as two separate LPs). The accomplishment is even more impressive when you consider that Corgan single-handedly wrote 26 of the songs, and he co-produced the album with Flood (U2, Depeche Mode) and Alan Moulder (My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Nine Inch Nails). Corgan’s role as the Great Pumpkin is undeniable, but Mellon Collie at least feels more like a band effort than its predecessor. Even as it incorporates such baroque textures as harp, strings and grand piano, the album retains the rough edge and intimate vibe of old friends (and sometimes enemies) playing together in their rehearsal space.
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Auralcrave
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness remains the masterpiece of a band at his highest creativity, able to go through multiple styles and influences with no drawbacks, playing with their melodramatic traits: could be that the exclusion of some tracks would have disclosed the beauty of the album in a more evident way, although the choice would not have been simple.
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Stereogum
Despite this sprawl and pomp, there’s a smaller but perhaps more meaningful legacy it offers to modern listeners: It stands as one of the last, most purely authentic and enjoyable documents of that dubious era of ’90s guitar rock, which was already in the process of being co-opted from the outcasts and placed in the hands of obnoxious party brats like Fred Durst. But again, the album’s macro legacy, following through on its ambitions and crafting a commercially and artistically viable epic that’s not only as big as the ocean but also flows as naturally, is more critical than ever before.
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Irish Times
The album reminds me of those long summer nights, where the air is warm, wandering the streets with your friends or chilling at someone’s house. The kind of nights you want to go on forever. I still return to this album now and again, and will be forever grateful for it being brought into my life.
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Spin
Mellon Collie shows Smashing Pumpkins to be still growing, still moving. Rock is in another titanic age; its new demigods are reinventing the myths and redrawing the territories. Times like these make it easy to think too much of yourself. So Corgan chooses a role with maximum versatility: Several times, he calls himself a fool, and if there’s any thread holding this epic together, it’s the journey of the bravest and most whimsical of Tarot card figures, who ventures into all territories as a guide for the less adventurous. Billy might have to circle the world a few times before he gets to own it. But the journey isn’t going to get boring any time soon.
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Last Fm
Praised by critics for its ambition and scope, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness earned the band seven Grammy Award nominations in 1997. The album was voted the 29th greatest album of all time in 1998 by Q magazine readers. In 2003, the album was ranked number 487 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
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Apple Music
This edition of one of the most important and artistically ambitious albums of the '90s features a remastering of the original album by Bob Ludwig. Even before it was further boosted by Ludwig here, the original album was one of the finest-sounding albums of its day, with producer Flood and his longtime associate Alan Moulder ensuring that every guitar chord achieved epic grandeur. The album spanned two fully packed CDs upon its original release, making it essentially a 4-LP set. The songwriting was solid, and Corgan was clearly on a mission to inject his prog-rock interests into a slicker-than-grunge hard rock sound.
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Tvtropes
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is the third album by The Smashing Pumpkins, released on October 23, 1995. Coming off the success of Siamese Dream, the death of Kurt Cobain, the decline of grunge, and the band's experience headlining Lollapalooza '94, Face of the Band Billy Corgan decided to write the album as if it was their last.
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Diffuser
The Pumpkins' follow-up, 1995's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, shares that same juxtaposition of straightforward imagery and unanswered questions. A Victorian-era beauty filled with melancholy hurdles through the infinite sadness of space, but who is she? And what exactly is she doing with her hands?
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Sputnik
There was once a time when I thought Siamese Dream was The Smashing Pumpkins’ true peak, with Mellon Collie at a close second. However, that opinion has been slowly reversing with the passage of time. The more time I’ve given this album to grow and cultivate in my eardrums, the more its phenomenal consistency and emotional potency have also grown. Moreover, Mellon Collie just feels important. Alternative rock needed something this grandiose and diverse, whether the practitioners or listeners of the genre wanted to dispute that or not. Such a fully-realized masterwork only comes around once in a lifetime, and you’d be wise to lend an ear to its timeless tunes if you haven’t already.
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Liveabout
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness earned The Smashing Pumpkins seven 1997 Grammy nominations and a Grammy win for Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal for "Bullet with Butterfly Wings". The Pumpkin's "Tonight, Tonight" video, inspired by French "Cinemagician" Georges Méliès's 1902 silent film A Trip to the Moon, won six awards at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1996 including: Video of the Year, Best Direction, Best Special Effects, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and Breakthrough Video. Mellon Collie went on to sell over 9 million copies in the U.S. alone. The Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness remains a groundbreaking creative accomplishment and is the best selling rock double album of the 90s.
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Happy
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is the third outing for the Smashing Pumpkins, a dense double-disc concept album centred on themes of mortal sorrow. Coming from a ‘90s alt-rock/grunge band, the album was a more pompous and musically ambitious undertaking than it had any right to be. However, it was this brazenness that paid off, scoring a #1 on Billboard, a Diamond certification from the RIAA, seven Grammy nominations, and enduring acclaim for being one of the magnum opuses of modern rock.
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The Hard Times
“Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” changed the way we incorporate the steam-punk aesthetic into goth-grunge forever. In that same year a future writer for The Hard Times who greatly overvalued this accomplishment would turn 18 years old and make a decision that, in retrospect, maybe he should not have been legally allowed to for a few more years. The album’s first single “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” has gone on to become a rock standard. Between that song and other indelible hits like “1979,” “Zero,” and “Tonight, Tonight” one could argue that this album possesses a timeless quality. This tattoo however, a sardonic looking renaissance girl coming out of a star accompanied by the words “I’m in love with my sadness,” does not.
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Punk News
The third and most famous album by seminal alt-rock act Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (or as I like to call it, Melodrama and the Infinite Song List) is probably the most overrated album ever. The music press has continually heaped praise on this vaguely conceptual rock-opera for the last 20 years, despite the fact that there are 28 songs on the album and only three of them are any good. "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" is a crucial jock jam, "Zero" is a good song, and I don't change the radio when "1979" comes on. The rest of the album is so boring it's unbelievable.
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Clevynt
Before founding frontman Billy Corgan fell down the conspiracy theorist / wrestling promoter rabbit hole, he led one of the greatest bands of the '90s. At the height of the Pumpkins' career, in a decade where many bands fought against the spotlight, Corgan wanted to ascend. After releasing 1993's breakout Siamese Dream, the band made the ultimate excess move by unveiling Mellon Collie as a double album. Clocking in at a hefty two hours, the album exhibited an emotional take on existentialism, unbridled teen angst and an unyielding belief in love. Though the record contains some of the band's most accomplished and memorable work to date, its size lends itself to more than a little indulgence. With love and respect to Mellon Collie, we went down the track list, cut down the non-essentials and came up with a revised LP we stand behind.
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EW
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness still stands out, both in the context of the Smashing Pumpkins’ strange career and the odd times during which it first landed on Planet Rock. And hey, it’s definitely better than Rancid.
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Av Club
When it was finally released on October 24, 1995, Mellon Collie was the critical and commercial success that the Smashing Pumpkins had hoped it would be. It went to #1 on the charts while “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” became the group’s first single to crack the Top 40. “1979” did even better, almost making it to the top 10 before peaking at #12—the highest showing the band would ever reach. Plaudits and awards piled up as the band assumed its place as the most culturally vital and important rock band on the planet. They even logged an appearance as themselves on The Simpsons. But then the success began to crumble.
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Tunebat
The following tracks will sound good when mixed with The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness - Remastered 2012, because they have similar tempos, adjacent Camelot values, and complementary styles.
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Prnewswire
Originally released October 24, 1995, MELLON COLLIE AND THE INFINITE SADNESS would debut at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart and was certified 9x platinum by the RIAA. It yielded major hits like "Bullet With Butterfly Wings"–the band's unlikely first Top 40 hit–the exquisite "1979" and epic "Tonight, Tonight" as well as a thoroughly inspired series of videos. Produced by BILLY CORGAN, Flood and Alan Moulder, the album would also earn a Grammy Award (1996 Best Hard Rock Performance for "Bullet With Butterfly Wings") as well as seven nominations. Beyond the more obvious hits, though, MELLON COLLIE is a song cycle of unusual depth and considerable range. It is a collection of stunningly beautiful moments when everything lined up--a moment in time that's still here to be treasured.
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Guitar World
One can be forgiven for feeling a bit overwhelmed by the Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Released in 1995, it was a sprawling double-CD set with a nebulous conceptual underpinning, marked by extremes of existential angst and wistful romanticism set adrift in an ocean of squalling guitar furor and layers of gauzy six-string mesmerism. As such, it is an album that defines its decade while it transcends it. On the one hand, Mellon Collie is a glorious statement of the Alternative Nineties’ sound and vibe. Pumpkins guitarist, singer and principal songwriter Billy Corgan had one foot planted in the grunge guitar disruptiveness of Nirvana and their Seattle cohorts, and another in the impressionistic, “beautiful guitar noise” aesthetic of the British dream-pop scene spearheaded by bands like My Bloody Valentine.
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Metacritic
The songs from the Mellon Collie sessions speak not only to the quality of that abundance, but also to the Smashing Pumpkins' status as some of the most creative and successful purveyors of sensitive but cerebral art rock.
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Tanner Writes
Over 28 total tracks, the loud moments take a back seat to the gentler, softer side of a band that’s ultimately in flux. In many ways, it was so symbolic of being a junior high student. I was going through adolescent changes, and so was this band. The title track that kicks off the album is an instrumental, sparse piano melody that sets the stage for the orchestral opus, “Tonight, Tonight.” We then fall back to some more familiar, guitar-oriented territory. Until we get to my personal favorite of the collection, “Cupid de Locke,” which has a truly angelic feel. Over a droning bass drum we get harp music and a cascade of shaker instrumentation as Corgan depicts the pitfall of capturing one’s heart in dramatic fashion.
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Strangeway
On this day in history (October 24, 1995), The Smashing Pumpkins released their 3rd studio album Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness in the US (it was released the day before in the UK). This double album featured the singled Bullet With Butterfly Wings, 1979, Tonight Tonight, Zero and Thirty Three. This album was a hit right from the start, as it debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 charts.
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Reel And Rock
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness reaches heights that most modern bands wouldn’t even bother looking up at (“an Icarus with wings that worked” said Time magazine, naming it top album of 1995) but its best quality may end up being Corgan’s knack for seeing life’s smaller defining moments and merging it with the panorama. The shimmering “1979”, modestly tucked away in the middle of the second disc (“Twilight to Starlight” for those keeping score at home), turned out to be the record’s biggest hit song and one of the great singles of the Nineties. In thirty lines of nearly uninterrupted verse, Corgan paints an impressionistic portrait of his generation as they see life spread out before them, all the way to its inevitable passing (“With the headlights pointed at the dawn/We were sure we’d never see an end to it all”).
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Nts
The Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness has been played on NTS in shows including WeDidIt Presents: R.I.P. FM, featured first on 16 November 2019. Songs played include Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness .
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Nme
The 28 track ‘Mellon Collie…’ is widely regarded as one of the most influential albums of the ’90s, selling over 10million copies and featuring the likes of ‘1979’, ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’, ‘Tonight, Tonight’ and ‘Zero’.
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Abc
This record is dark, sprawling and diverse. There's the delicate piano of the opening title track and darkly triumphant ‘Tonight, Tonight', with full orchestral backing. The acoustic revelations of ‘Stumbleine', the synthesised back end of disc two and anthemic ‘Muzzle', which feels like it was designed to be heard in packed-out stadiums.
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Teenink
This 1995 album is mesmerizing and stands the test of time. It was Grammy-nominated for Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Alternative Music Performance; it debuted on the charts at number one and has sold over nine million copies. You will definitely listen to this one over and over again. “Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness” asks, “Can a rock band incorporate poetry and emotion?” and answers with a resounding “Yes!”
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Sound
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is the third studio album by American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins, released on October 23, 1995 in the United Kingdom and a day later in the United States on Virgin Records. Produced by frontman Billy Corgan with Flood and Alan Moulder, the 28-track album was released as a two-disc CD and triple LP. The album features a wide array of styles, as well as greater musical input from bassist D'arcy Wretzky and second guitarist James Iha. Propelled by the album's lead single, "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", it debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 with first week sales of 246,500 units. To date it remains the band's only album to top the Billboard 200. It spawned five more singles—"1979", "Zero", "Tonight, Tonight", the promotional "Muzzle", and "Thirty-Three"—over the course of 1996, and was certified diamond by the RIAA, equivalent to over 10 million units sold. Praised by critics for its ambition and scope, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness earned the band seven Grammy Award nominations in 1997, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year ("1979"), as well as 9 MTV Music Video Awards nominations, 8 of which were for "Tonight, Tonight", including "Video of the Year". Not only did they all become hits on both mainstream rock and modern rock stations, but "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", "1979", "Tonight, Tonight", and "Thirty-Three" also became the band's first Top 40 hits, crossing over to pop radio stations.
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Fontmeme
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is the third album by American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins.
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Cultlure
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is the third studio album by the American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins, released on October 24, 1995 on Virgin Records. Produced by frontman Billy Corgan with Flood and Alan Moulder, the 28-track album was released as a two-disc CD and triple LP. The album features a wide array of styles, as well as greater musical input from bassist D'arcy Wretzky and second guitarist James Iha.
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Treblezine
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness represents the best and worst of Billy Corgan’s ambitions; it’s also kind of a bittersweet album, since it was the last one to feature the original lineup. But it’s just way too long. A lot of filler songs clutter it up, and as impressive as it is to see all the ideas they cram into it, there’s absolutely no reason why it has to be 28 songs. So here’s where I come in: My Mellon Collie alternate tracklist is cut in half, made it into a lean 14-track, 52 minute album. It’d still have to be on two LPs, I reckon, but it fits on one CD, and I’d argue it flows much better. Feel free to argue in the comments.
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Sound
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is the third studio album by American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins, released on October 23, 1995 in the United Kingdom and a day later in the United States on Virgin Records. Produced by frontman Billy Corgan with Flood and Alan Moulder, the 28-track album was released as a two-disc CD and triple LP. The album features a wide array of styles, as well as greater musical input from bassist D'arcy Wretzky and second guitarist James Iha. Propelled by the album's lead single, "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", it debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 with first week sales of 246,500 units. To date it remains the band's only album to top the Billboard 200. It spawned five more singles—"1979", "Zero", "Tonight, Tonight", the promotional "Muzzle", and "Thirty-Three"—over the course of 1996, and was certified diamond by the RIAA, equivalent to over 10 million units sold. Praised by critics for its ambition and scope, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness earned the band seven Grammy Award nominations in 1997, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year ("1979"), as well as 9 MTV Music Video Awards nominations, 8 of which were for "Tonight, Tonight", including "Video of the Year". Not only did they all become hits on both mainstream rock and modern rock stations, but "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", "1979", "Tonight, Tonight", and "Thirty-Three" also became the band's first Top 40 hits, crossing over to pop radio stations.
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Fontmeme
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is the third album by American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins.
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Cultlure
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is the third studio album by the American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins, released on October 24, 1995 on Virgin Records. Produced by frontman Billy Corgan with Flood and Alan Moulder, the 28-track album was released as a two-disc CD and triple LP. The album features a wide array of styles, as well as greater musical input from bassist D'arcy Wretzky and second guitarist James Iha.
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Treblezine
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness represents the best and worst of Billy Corgan’s ambitions; it’s also kind of a bittersweet album, since it was the last one to feature the original lineup. But it’s just way too long. A lot of filler songs clutter it up, and as impressive as it is to see all the ideas they cram into it, there’s absolutely no reason why it has to be 28 songs. So here’s where I come in: My Mellon Collie alternate tracklist is cut in half, made it into a lean 14-track, 52 minute album. It’d still have to be on two LPs, I reckon, but it fits on one CD, and I’d argue it flows much better. Feel free to argue in the comments.
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Ultimate Classic Rock
With the release of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness on Oct. 24, 1995, Smashing Pumpkins delivered not just their magnum opus, but arguably that of the entire alternative-rock era. The epic, cinematic vision contained within its 28 songs, two hours-plus of music and semi-conceptual flow was unparalleled for the genre. Almost all of this music emerged out of the fertile mind of Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan, who had reportedly amassed as many as 56 songs over the course of a year’s obsessive creativity leading up to his band’s third full-length album.
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Best Ever Albums
Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness is ranked 2nd best out of 18 albums by The Smashing Pumpkins on BestEverAlbums.com.
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Smells Like Infinite Sadness
But Mellon Collie also represents the end of another union: this would be the last album to feature the group’s original lineup as a whole, which would later become fractured by addiction and bruised egos. This makes the album closer, Farewell and Goodnight, all the more poignant, as it features all members trading off vocals in a gentle lullaby.
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The Sound Of Vinyl
The album would debut at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart and was certified 9x platinum by the RIAA. It yielded major hits like "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" the band's unlikely first Top 40 hit the exquisite "1979" and epic "Tonight, Tonight" as well as a thoroughly inspired series of videos. Produced by Billy Corgan, Flood and Alan Moulder, the album would also earn a Grammy Award (1996 Best Hard Rock Performance for "Bullet with Butterfly Wings") as well as seven nominations. Beyond the more obvious hits, though, Mellon Collie is a song cycle of unusual depth and considerable range. It is a collection of stunningly beautiful moments when everything lined up-a moment in time that's still here to be treasured.
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Barnes and Noble
The pumpkins are the only band in the world that has ever existed that can help someone emmotionally find themselves.
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Hpb
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the band turns in one of the most ambitious and indulgent albums in rock history. Lasting over two hours and featuring 28 songs, the album is certainly a challenging listen. To Billy Corgan's credit, it's a rewarding and compelling one as well. Although the artistic scope of the album is immense, the Smashing Pumpkins flourish in such an overblown setting.
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Self-Title
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness captures Corgan at the peak of his prickly powers; playing the part of a frontman who flattens everything in his path, from the vein-popping vocals and charred power chords of “X.Y.U” and “Tales of a Scorched Earth” to the trademark temper tantrums of “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” and “Zero.” And lurking behind all that angst is some of the band’s most ambitious work, a series of palette-stomping deep cuts that includes claustrophobic new-wave nods (“Love”), slow but steady builds (“Galapagos”) and at least two genuine epics (“Porcelina of the Vast Oceans,” “Thru the Eyes of Ruby”).
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Wikiwand
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is the third studio album by American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins, released on October 24, 1995 in the United Kingdom and a day later in the United States on Virgin Records. Produced by frontman Billy Corgan with Flood and Alan Moulder, the 28-track album was released as a two-disc CD and triple LP. The album features a wide array of styles, as well as greater musical input from bassist D'arcy Wretzky and second guitarist James Iha.
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Steve Hoffman
The remastered version has more clarity than the original. The muddy sound - compared to a Siamese Dream - is still there but with better definition.
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Pop Matters
Mellon Collie was Corgan's own Purple Rain, a myth-establishing blockbuster that launched him into the mainstream by pushing his sound into new, fantastic directions.
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Illustration Chronicles
In 1995 the alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins released Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. It was an epic twenty-eight track LP that loosely explored themes of night and day over the span of two records. On its release, it was praised by critics and fans alike, with its broader statements about life and death resonating strongly with the national consciousness of the time. To this days, it’s hard to imagine that another alternative rock album will ever match the sheer scope, ambition and popularity of this release.
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Drowned In Sound
It's not just "an alternative band touching on heavy metal" or "a heavy metal band operating on the fringes of dream pop/goth". It's real heavy metal music on one track followed by real Cure-like music on another.
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Head Fi
It's probably my all-time favorite album from the 90s and the deluxe LP box set looks VERY appealing.
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Cryptic Rock
Released on October 24, 1995 Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was the third studio album released by Alternative Rock innovators The Smashing Pumpkins. The album Has the distinction of being the only one by the band to debut at number 1 on the Billboard charts with first week sales coming in at just over a 240,000 albums sold. It is often hailed as one the best albums of a generation and one of the most innovative records of the ’90s. Coming in at a hefty twenty-eight songs and two discs, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness does feature several The Smashing Pumpkins classic singles that remain an integral part of modern culture, even to this day. Although The Smashing Pumpkins have undergone some lineup changes over the years, at the time Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was released, the band consisted of Billy Corgan (vocals/guitar), James Iha (rhythm guitar), D’arcy Wretzky (bass), and Jimmy Chamberlin (drums).
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Inreview
Mellon Collie fulfilled the mandate (or the prophecy) its mastermind set for it: This was the last Pumpkins record, at least in terms of the sound, the persona, and the success the band built for itself through the first half of the 1990s. No wonder the Pumpkins parted ways just a half-decade later. Where could they go after a summation this complete, this exhaustive, this infinite?
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FNews
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is the ultimate expression of unrestrained ambition, zealous stargazing, and confronting the “human condition of mortal sorrow.”
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Trespasserine
It was twenty years ago today, and it had nothing to do with Sgt Pepper. Actually, it was twenty-one years, October 1995. I was a grand old man of twenty-three, about to leave for great things called the Himalaya. I never gave it much of a listen at the time, probably because my head was swirling in santoors and my fingers tapping to tablas. They, you know who they are, had rumbled the mountain of rock two years previous, releasing an avalanche of tunes powerful enough to bury the listener in millions of tonnes of sub-sonic brilliance. The title even featured Siamese, one cool cat of a word. That was then and this was not. Even though only a couple of years had passed between ’93 and ‘95, the ultimate male rite of passage (other than unholy communion) happened to fall for me in between, so the before and after factor had made two short years into two distinct pre-me and post-me lifetimes.
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Wizard of Cos
The rocker who wrote most the songs on the album said Mellon Collie spoke to " the human condition of mortal sorrow." Not bad for a rocker, eh? The album sold ten million copies in the U.S. and had seven Grammy nominations but before now it was never used in the context of a Christmas album.
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Seminole Hard Rock
Formed in Chicago, IL in 1988, The Smashing Pumpkins released their heralded debut album “Gish” in 1991 and found mainstream success with 1993's quadruple multi-platinum “Siamese Dream” and 1995's 10-times multi-platinum “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.” With more than 30 million albums sold to date, the two-time Grammy, MTV VMA, and American Music Award winning band remains one of the most influential alternative rock bands in the world.
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Tanger Center
Formed in Chicago, IL in 1988, The Smashing Pumpkins released their heralded debut album Gish in 1991 and found mainstream success with 1993's 4x multi platinum Siamese Dream and 1995's 10x multi-platinum Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. With over 30 million albums sold to date, the two-time GRAMMY®, MTV VMA, and American Music Award winning band remains one of the most influential alternative rock bands in the world.
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Do 615
Formed in Chicago, IL in 1988, The Smashing Pumpkins released their heralded debut album Gish in 1991 and found mainstream success with 1993's 4x multi platinum Siamese Dream and 1995s 10x multi-platinum Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. With over 30 million albums sold to date, the two-time GRAMMY®, MTV VMA, and American Music Award winning band remains one of the most influential alternative rock bands in the world.
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Live Nation Entertainment
Formed in Chicago, IL in 1988, The Smashing Pumpkins released their heralded debut album Gish in 1991 and found mainstream success with 1993’s 4x multi platinum Siamese Dream and 1995’s 10x multi-platinum Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. With over 30 million albums sold to date, the two-time GRAMMY®, MTV VMA, and American Music Award winning band remains one of the most influential alternative rock bands in the world.
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Event Brite
Formed in Chicago, IL in 1988, The Smashing Pumpkins released their heralded debut album Gish in 1991 and found mainstream success with 1993's 4x multi platinum Siamese Dream and 1995's 10x multi-platinum Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. With over 30 millions albums sold to date, the two-time GRAMMY®, MTV VMA, and American Music Award winning band remains one of the most influential alternative rock bands in the world.
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Holycity Sinner
Formed in Chicago in 1988, The Smashing Pumpkins released their heralded debut album Gish in 1991 and found mainstream success with 1993's 4x multi platinum Siamese Dream and 1995's 10x multi-platinum Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. With over 30 million albums sold to date, the two-time Grammy, MTV VMA, and American Music Award winning band remains one of the most influential alternative rock bands in the world.
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Quadcities
Formed in Chicago, IL in 1988, The Smashing Pumpkins released their heralded debut album Gish in 1991 and found mainstream success with 1993’s 4x multi-platinum Siamese Dream and 1995’s 10x multi-platinum Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. With over 30 million albums sold to date, the two-time GRAMMY®, MTV VMA, and American Music Award winning band remains one of the most influential alternative rock bands in the world
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GH
It's hard to pick one song from the Smashing Pumpkins sprawling album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness — which took up two CDs! — but "Tonight, Tonight" shows the band being both soft and sad and heavy and loud. It also earns points for its video, which references the beginning of film history by parodying Georges Méliès's famous "A Trip to the Moon."
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