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

definitely the best Billy ever pulled off the huge gothic skirt thing he tried a number of times

queer utopia where everyone is wearing enormous gowns and the most traditional representation of masculinity sits on a toilet throne

https://i.imgur.com/NbIXs4C.jpg
5. Soma
844 points, 24 votes, 4 #1 votes
From: Siamese Dream, 1993

this is prob my favorite ilx poll since.. van? maybe my favorite ever

[Guitar Solo]

def the song I was most obsessed with as a #teen and the first time I really understood the power of dynamics

I guess if Landslide is gonna place, it's gonna have to happen really damn soon.

nah

https://i.imgur.com/1sf8Djv.jpg
4. Hummer
888 points, 24 votes, 5 #1 votes
From: Siamese Dream, 1993

These last three together are killing me. This is everything great about Pumpkins in their prime.

Xp
I'd take rhinoceros over starla any day. The proggy bombast of the latter does not help. In a way the soaring reminds me of gybe! And i miss a melody. Rhinoceros on the other hand i totally love with all my heart. The outer space beginning, the slow and tender tune evolving and hanging there for such a long time, and then the guitar-feedback explosion. It's all in there. Such a simple, effective song. Probably the one song which i'd choose by them.

5 #1s!

I like to imagine this song predicts the commercial failure of Hum

Yeah, Rhinoceros is the one my adult self would keep...

lol i thought "it'd be funny if hummer placed right after soma" and lo

my dim hope is mayonaise bests 1979

fine with either winning but only one is on my ballot

who knows maybe "drown" won

I'm really hoping for that!

"rocket" was the first song with more than one no. 1 voter. wow @ "hummer" having five

Hummer-Cherub Rock-Soma were my top 3 in that order, but they could have probably been in any order.

I only realized after the voting period that my top 2 both include musical quotes from Rush:

https://youtu.be/stBOhNxLrbM?t=4m34s
https://youtu.be/1pcNP9JE0bs?t=6m9s

And I think flappy pointed this one out:
https://youtu.be/2UU62UcP_BA?t=3m53s
https://youtu.be/q-KE9lvU810?t=18s

https://i.imgur.com/fZ1oMJK.jpg
3. Drown
920 poits, 26 votes, 3 #1 votes
From: Singles: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 1992

amazing

heh, I voted for every song in the top 10. What do I win?

3-6 is my top 4.

Hummer was my #3 but it could easily have been #1 on another day.

And I think flappy pointed this one out:
https://youtu.be/2UU62UcP_BA?t=3m53s
https://youtu.be/q-KE9lvU810?t=18s

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Sunday, April 8, 2018 9:08 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think this one oddly supports my point that jimmy is a very busy drummer but never actually sounds busy

I guessed 20 MCIS tracks but we're getting 21.

This didn't make my ballot since I, um, didn't know it until I had voted. It's p sweet, though. Nice SY-style noise jam.

I had Drown at #9 or something, should've been higher.

I've heard "Drown" before but...I don't remember it.

Drown is a great discovery, thanks ILM.

Drown has such a great groove and build, and then that beautiful 4-minute feedback jam!

"drown" is the perfect gish/sd transitional track i think, even more than "starla" which feels like its own thing. you can hear where they are and where they're going simultaneously

Through its ascending repetition, it's almost like a Reich or Glass piece, except as an ode to the elevating potential of Rock. It's in many ways the opposite of most things I look for in music, especially in guitar-and-bass-and-drums-based music. Which only makes me trust my love of it more--and it's been almost the only SP song I've felt the need to put on periodically over the last 20 years since I otherwise walked away. It still gives me the same feeling of soaring, yearning possibility as when I was 14 and Smashing Pumpkins meant the world to me. For me, "Starla" is Smashing Pumpkins.

Controp: "Starla" always bums me out a little because it seems like it's going for what I DO often look for in music but it always seems like there's something missing from that huge solo and climax; it's just a little too basic and lands slightly off the mark. I'll try one more time.

smoke some w33d beforehand imo

Huh, that might be what's missing.

oh wait sorry i did not mean to be extremely dismissive about "cherub rock" itt bc you know how on the last repetition of the chorus there's that, like, really bright chord droning through the whole thing? that's the best thing in the sp catalog

last minute or so of "cherub" is really a guitar symphony

idk I love "starla" but I don't partoke xxp

lol sorry to bring up weed i'm just a big stoner these days

(bc of anxiety and i gave up drinking)

but "starla" *is* really great... on weed

So I guess "Today" and "Rocket" are 1 and 2? Interesting.

It's awesome that so many people are apparently discovering "Drown" for the firdt time--because that suggests almost everyone who *did* know it had it very high in their lists. Wonder if it has the highest median/mean/average position?

"drown" was actually in the lower reaches of my list but that's no knock against it considering at least half of the ballot was vying for no. 1 simultaneously

https://media.giphy.com/media/Chnyt9Au7DZW8/giphy.gif

Okay, Googled and revisited "Drown." Coming back to me now.

Here's the problem, probably: I didn't encounter drown until 2002 or 2003, when I copped the Pumpkins' best-of. Never heard the Singles soundtrack; no one hipped me to this song. It was never something I experienced in the bloom of my Pumpkins fandom (which, to be honest, has been done for a while) and so it came across as just another really nice, Pumpkins Prime jam - like encountering Nirvana's "You Know You're Right" whenever that emerged.