Bang Bang You're Dead... POLL In Your Head - ILM Artist Poll #87 - SMASHING PUMPKINS - Results

yeah theres no way

Geek USA will absolutely place.

My list was slightly skewed against fast/heavy/fun Pumpkins songs, but Geek USA is the best in that category.

Geek USA was my gateway into the second, singles-free half of the album - it wears its catchiness right up front. I actually was kind of underrating it as the lesser/simpler/accessible piece of that set, as I've come to adore Soma, Mayonaise and Silverfuck. I had to go back and listen to realize, no, you don't just have to be 16, it really is fantastic.

Yeah, I'll replace "Drown" with "Geek" cuz I don't think "Drown" has enough pull to get it listed.

Top 20 Prediction:
Perfect, 1979, Set the Ray to Jerry, Mayonnaise, Soma, Today, Thirty-three, Soma, Cherub Rock, Stand Inside Your Love, Daydream, Rhinoceros, Landslide (if it counts), Hummer, Jellybelly, Fuck You (An Ode to No One, Geek USA, Rocket, Here Is No Why, Thru the Eyes of Ruby

woah woah woah no way does Drown have less pull than Landslide. maybe I was talking crazy to imagine it as #1 and it won't be on EVERY ballot but I can imagine enough ppl had it in the top half that it shows up.

Geek fucking rules but didn't vote for it per the live rule.

Songs that are perfect as recorded that I didn't vote for: Zero, Bodies, Fuck You, The Aeroplane Flies High, Where Boys Fear to Tread, Bullet, Plume, Frail and Bedazzled, Drown, Mouths of Babes, Stand Inside Your Love, The Imploding Voice.

xp who tf voted for Landslide

Crazy talk, I didn’t even have to relisten to Drown for it to be top 5 in my ballot.

also would never have taken "perfect" to be any kind of contender but maybe I don't talk to pumpkins fans enough.... it's nice and all, but kinda watery and idk not super memorable to me.

Maybe "Drown" replaces "Fuck You (An Ode to No One)". That's not my favorite song by any stretch (probably wouldn't make my top 60) but I had a feeling it'd beat out a lot of the Machina tracks for inclusion.

I can't imagine Fuck You placing above Drown, as much as I prefer it.

They really fucked up "Perfect" by writing it in the studio. The arrangement of the version they played on "SNL" could've been a hit but instead we got an overproduced song that buried the hooks.

"Perfect" on SNL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnWRByYTVmA

You also have Soma in your list twice so that frees up one space.

No, It should be in the Top 20 twice ;-)

They really fucked up "Perfect" by writing it in the studio. The arrangement of the version they played on "SNL" could've been a hit but instead we got an overproduced song that buried the hooks.

― FourLegsGood, Saturday, April 7, 2018 7:04 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a what that whatted the what

The final two will be neck-and-neck between Soma and Soma (instrumental mix)

yea "perfect" is p much ~perfect~ as it is on Adore. live performances might have more heft but I don't think any hooks are buried on the studio version.

Geek fucking rules but didn't vote for it per the live rule.

Wait, what rule was this??

re: "perfect" i love the production, it and "1979" are the closest the pumpkins come to that kind of building-up-a-gentle-rock-song-sigh-by-sigh approach a la fleetwood mac

https://i.imgur.com/Ci1FZfZ.jpg
20. Perfect
402 points, 17 votes
From: Adore, 1998

perfect!

haha amazing timing

xxxxposts well and "landslide"

further from stevie sigh territory but they coulda tore up "the ledge." i can totally hear billy whining out the vocal at rapid clip, and swapping in god knows what kind of frenetic guitar bombardment for the sped up rubber bands stretched over a cereal box played by lindsay buckingham.

Landslide in top 20 voids the poll. HKK was my #1. Frail & Bedazzled my #3. Those tracks are everything I love about the first two albums but just a bit faster, heavier, and/or catchier. Overdriven vocals on HKK allow them to sit in the mix like a bonus guitar.

this was my no. 3

Wait, what rule was this??

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, April 7, 2018 10:14 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i explained upthread but in order to make putting a ballot of only 25 songs together possible i nixed all songs that i prefer live and find staid in comparison on the albums: geek, siva, fuck you, i am one, silverfuck, quiet, ruby (only because of the missing outro jam). it's not even a "songs vs. performance pieces" thing, it was just a means to an end to make a ballot like this possible.

HKK was my #1.

thank you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ENJ7QbrII

idk, "perfect" just never got stuck in my head or made me feel anything. cool that people like it but to me it feels like a harbinger of machina - the desire to do an x-type song (this'll be a soft, precious ballad!) but billy's well has suddenly run dry and he has only ordinary songs when he wants extraordinary expressions of these feelings.

(one of only two videos of SD era performances of HKK) xp

I barely remember "Perfect," and only as a pale sequel to '1979' which was already Corgan trying to do something other bands would'be done better and that even then would've been forgotten as a "I Love the 90s" dustbin liner a la "Isn't It Ironic" or the like. People felt the loss at the time, it's weird that the passing of time seems to have made it less clear for ILMers when it's just become more stark with decades of separation for perspective. But I have very little nostalgia for the 90s, musically, so maybe I'm too harsh.

https://i.imgur.com/Pwx86hx.jpg
19. Obscured
426 points, 15 votes
From: Today single, 1993 and Pisces Iscariot, 1994

xp More stark for me, I meant to say.

Contrast: "Obscured," which has aged better than almost any other SP.

was not expecting this.

Nice placement for Obscured! It's absolutely gorgeous.

Spotify: ILM Smashing Pumpkins

up to date thanks to others.

People felt the loss at the time, it's weird that the passing of time seems to have made it less clear for ILMers

.... what

And what bands would've done 1979 better?

At the time everyone I knew who'd been a fan (or super-fan) understood by 'Adore' or earlier that SP had lost the tack. And I seem to recall that being the critical and popular sentiment, too. For lots of ILMers, though, time seems to have leveled all of their work even through 'Machina'. Whereas for me, the passage of time has removed all of the emotional invesment I had in the band as a young person to make the degradation post-Pisces even more stark. Which just leaves me trying to figure what people see now in something like "Perfect" to rank it so high.

"Perfect" is gorgeous and should have been one of their absolute biggest hits

lmao at Billy's sunglasses in the SNL clip

Ehh, half the people I knew thought SP lost the tack after Gish. For a band that evolved at the pace they did there will always be people who would rather them stick to whatever they might consider the band's strengths.

I guess what I meant is it just feels generically dated to 1995/96.

But maybe The Cardigans, for it to have been good? It sounded more like a Garbage song than SP, at the time. But I think it might've been best as a propery pop song, Kylie Minogue or Spice Girls or something.

I could def hear that, I think I even posted that in the campaigning thread

https://i.imgur.com/zqFvnWi.jpg
18. Stand Inside Your Love
430 points, 16 votes, 1 #1 vote
From: Machina/The Machines of God, 2000

https://i.imgur.com/GqBYgzh.jpg
18. Geek U.S.A.
430 points, 17 votes
From: Siamese Dream, 1993

shit, are we going to #1 tonight?

"Geek U.S.A." is fuckin unstoppable

Shot full of diamonds.

WORDS CAN'T DEFINE WHAT I FEEL INSIDE

this should have been my #1

Fuck yeah

going to #11 now, top 10 will be later (tomorrow for americans)

one thing I really like in Stand Inside Your Love is the way the first pre-chorus seems like it's going to be the loud chorus to contrast with the quieter verse though in the overcompressed Machina way, but then with "DREAM!" the real chorus kicks in which is actually loud. their last great pop song