submissions

Hole – Retard Girl Lyrics

17 years ago

A particularly interesting line is #13, which I believe should be "As shines the moon among the lesser fires" - that line is written in the insert for the First Session CD, both in English (p. 4) and in Latin (back). It is apparently a translation of part of a line from the poet Horace (Carmina, Liber 1, XII, 47): "velut inter ignis luna minores". I think it is a clever way of indicating that the person being picked on for being different from her tormentors is actually different in a good way, i.e., better - a bright moon among much dimmer stars. It forms a great ironic constrast with the title. "She don't think like the others do" - they probably don't read Horace (in Latin) and use interesting metaphors to get their revenge.

submissions

The Smashing Pumpkins – Zero Lyrics

17 years ago

I recently noticed something interesting about the odd part of Zero that states: emptiness = loneliness = cleanliness = Godliness. Some potential clues about it's origin can be found in a performance on 8/5/94 at Downing Stadium (see www.archive.org). In the middle of the Smashing Pumpkin's set, within the song "I Am One" (within a rant about "nothing" that I think was often included that year), Billy Corgan added some interesting lines that sound like an early version of that part of Zero: "Loneliness is emptiness, emptiness is cleanliness, cleanliness is next to Godliness, and Godliness is next to nothingness; nothing; zero". Many MCIS album songs such as Zero were apparently written/finalized in the fall of 1994 soon after that tour. Earlier in that set, Billy Corgan did a brief spoof of a song by the band Hole called "Miss World" (from their April 1994 album), so he was certainly very familiar with that song (and thinking about it that day). The Smashing Pumpkins had a close relationship with Hole on many levels (friends, toured together, wrote songs together, Melissa Auf der Maur in both). In the music video for Miss World (posted on YouTube), there are concert shots with an (empty?) Miss World standing in front of a big sign that says "Cleanliness is next to Godliness". I think this must be related somehow - even the "next to" matches at that point. In a concert later that August in San Diego (also posted on YouTube), Billy Corgan added the line "You can break my heart into a thousand pieces; I don't care" after the line about cleanliness and Godliness - that could relate to the loneliness part.

submissions

The Smashing Pumpkins – Rocket Lyrics

17 years ago

A rocket escaping from earth's gravity to reach the sky is a great metaphor for many things (some mentioned already), and I think Billy Corgan might have been referring to more than one in the final version of Rocket. But there are many clues that a romantic breakup is at least an important one. It was apparently first performed around June 1991 along with Drown (see spfc.org), so it may have been written in the spring of 1991, well before most of the other Siamese Dream songs, and initially had a similar context to Drown, which is more clearly about a romantic breakup. Rocket's lyrics apparently evolved some for the 1993 album, though (see YouTube postings of 1992 concerts). Earlier lyrics included lines such as "come back again" and "we'll rise again". And the artwork for the single (see Wikipedia) included a heart and the words "bye bye". I think the "Love" at the beginning of the song should be included as an important part of the lyrics (with possible multiple meanings), and I think the first "free" should be after the question mark. I don't think there is much "filler" in this song.

submissions

The Smashing Pumpkins – Quiet Lyrics

17 years ago

According to spfc.org, a demo tape of Siamese Dream songs had the title "Quiet and other songs, . . ", indicating that Billy Corgan may have considered the lyrics of Quiet to be somewhat central to the album's theme(s). I think of it as an introduction to the album's discussion (with parents) about a difficult childhood ("Be ashamed of the mess you made"). It starts with something that a child might hear from a parent who works late at night and sleeps during the day - "Quiet, I am sleeping!", but I think the idea is to turn that phrase around to refer to an abused child experiencing only silence about it all around ("Couldn't tell a soul", "Jesus, are you listening", "deny") and tuning out ("I've been sleeping", "I can't hear you"). But the painful memory remains ("my eyes never forget"), even without any sound. It is ironic that a song called "Quiet" is played very loudly, but I think the volume is meant to represent finally speaking out loud about the past, breaking the "awful sound of nothing". I particularly like the falling snow metaphor - it reminds me of waking up as a child in a northern, urban area and knowing that it had snowed heavily overnight because of the unusual "quiet" outside.

submissions

The Smashing Pumpkins – Drown Lyrics

18 years ago

It is hard to say that a Billy Corgan song has a specific meaning because his lyrics are often vague and impressionistic, but this one may be more specific than most. I think it was first performed around June of 1991. The Smashing Pumpkins had apparently toured with the band Hole a little earlier, and Hole performed a very distinctive song around that time called Drown Soda (I think it was released as a b-side in August 1991, but performed and recorded earlier). In that song Courtney Love suddenly yells "drown" very loudly at one point - it is quite memorable. If you listen to a recording of that Hole song, you could certainly envision applying the unusual verb "hear" to Courtney's "drown". That may well explain Billy Corgan's first line at one level. I think in interviews Billy Corgan and Courtney Love have mentioned that they were dating around early 1991. Does anyone know more about this aspect of the song? It's a great general song about romantic breakups that fit well in the movie, and it may have other meanings too, but it may have been written with a specific breakup (and song) at least partly in mind. I think that would make the song even more interesting.

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