Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

Probably the best grunge record I've ever listened to so - at least at this point in life - I really fell in love with The Smashing Pumpkins and now I just want to relisten to their albums I know already. Mellon Collie is long, yeah, but doesn't feel too long at all. It's a beautiful 2 hour long journey that I am glad I could experience and can't wait for next time.

There are a few standout moments in this tracklist for sure, but generally I feel like the overall experience is attenuated given how long the album is. It's not a bad listen for sure, but just a tad bloated with some songs that are pretty bland. 3.2/5 -> 3/5

Very diverse (and long) album. Lots of chill songs, but also some screeching ones. Overall I liked it, especially the softer songs.

If you asked me yesterday if I liked this album I would’ve said yes, absolutely; but to be honest I probably haven’t listened to this album in full since high school— 25 years ago. So it was good to be reacquainted with fond memories of the past.

Anyway it’s intense and beautiful and Billy makes the best of what is not the world’s most pleasant voice.

The Smashing Pumpkins have been known to me by name as an alternative hard rock band for quite some time. I'm not sure if I've ever heard a song by them. I certainly didn't know this album. There were a lot of good ideas on it. However, none of the songs really stuck in my memory enough to make me want to listen to them again. But maybe I'll have to give the album a second chance. 3/5

Album ran out of steam. It definitely did not need to be a double album. Would have been a 4 otherwise

I already knew that I liked a few songs from this album, primarily 1979. Overall, I'm not a big fan of the sound of the vocalist. I can definitely see how it influenced artists that followed and it's an interesting inflection point between punk/grunge into emo, post punk, and alternative rock. I probably can't give it a fair evaluation since I don't enjoy their specific sound. I can't say whether the album had much of a flow to it either, since I kept getting interrupted while listening to it at work. 2 out of 5 stars, I get it, but it ain't for me.

Who knew that Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness would be such a banger of an album. This album is very long clocking in at more than 2 hours which would be something i had a problem with but when the album is 2 hours of some of the greatest grunge music i have ever heard, i don't have any problem with it. The songs consisted of nonstop amazing guitar riffs, vocals that were a bit weird at first but still managed to fit the songs really well and that i eventually really started to like and enough quirkiness to give the album even more charm without getting annoying. The fact that this album is 2 hours long and every single song managed to be so great easily makes this one of my favorite albums i have done for this project.
Best Song: Bodies
Worst Song: Take Me Down

o gerador tá muito simpático essa semana. estou com medo

mto tempo que nao ouvia esse inteiro pq né. 2 horas de album.
mas é BIZARRO como não tem UMA MUSICA ruim nessa porra vai tomar no cu que delicia. só guitarrada bruta e derivados.
lindíssimo. eu morreria por 1979 inclusive ô musicão do inferno

Fitting title for my first day back at work after parental leave.

A few properly great songs (1979, Tonight Tonight). A lot that is not for me though. Just too pompous, earnest and overlong, all while lacking wit or humour. An Ode To No One? Hmmm.

Classic at double the fun.

Okay, this is 28 tracks long. Let's see how much of Billy Corgan's BS I can slog my way through.

... four and a half tracks before I noped out.

I'm not great at separating the art from the artist, so it's genuinely more difficult for me to hear the artistic merit in Smashing Pumpkins music with my extremely low opinion of Billy Corgan as a person. It is a pretty significant part of the 90s music scene, and very influential on later artists in multiple genres. Three stars, I guess?

Love this album, from the first time I saw the video for Tonight, Tonight on Kerrang (R.I.P Kerrang) to now it’s always been in my album rotation.

This album has deep rooted nostalgia for me. I remember one summer in the late 90's I stayed at my aunt and uncle's place in the city for a few days in the summer and my cousin was a few years older than me. He introduced me to this album, which was so different from the hillbilly backwoods shit I had been privvy to my whole childhood, coming from a little rural town. This would have been my first introduction to music that wasn't country or like commercial classic rock or radio hits. Smashing Pumpkins were kind of an underground, unknown genre of music at the time for me. I remember hearing how overdriven and fuzzy their guitars were and thinking "holy balls, wtf is this"... That led me to explore heavier shit, and the rest is history. But this album is largely responsible for me getting into alt rock/metal in the 00's.

I also remember in the song Zero when Billy sings "Emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness, and cleanliness is godliness, and God is empty just like me"... That was the darkest shit I had ever heard up to that point coming from a strong Christian family. Just hearing that I felt like I was gonna be struck down by lightning or some shit. Thinking back now, that isn't even that hard of a lyric, but at the time it was crazy.

Now I'm not saying that this is the most amazing album ever... It does have its drawbacks. Mainly, it kind of overstays its welcome, with the 2hr runtime, but this album is so deep rooted in nostalgia for me that it is impossible for me not to give this high marks. I'll always be greatful to my cousin for opening my mind to new types of music, and really starting me down the road to exploring new and different sounds.

Favourite songs: Zero, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Jellybelly, 1979, X.Y.U., Here Is No Why, An Ode to No Ode, Tales of a Scorched Earth, "Tonight, Tonight", Bodies, Thirty-Three

Least favourite songs: Porcelina of the Vast Oceans, Take Me Down

4/5

Why was this a double album? There's a ton of good tracks here, and it could have been an incredible album, but it's just drowned out on disc 2 with (almost) nothing but filler.

WAY too long for this challenge. This was fine. Some nice sounds but I think I skipped before the end of every track. This sort of thing has been done a lot better before and since

4.25
That's a solid 2h album!

I always wanted to like this album more than I actually did. There are many great highlights, but like most other reviewers, the double-album feels far too long, most get tired of Corgan's vocals after 20 minutes.

So, the Pumpkins are from my time period in the genre that I primarily listened to at the time. But past Siamese Dream, which is a masterpiece, I've never really been able to get into them. I don't think I've ever listened to this album all the way through - I've only heard the radio songs - so this will be interesting.

It's simultaneously very good, and also I didn't really connect to it. But you really can't argue with an album that has Tonight, Tonight, Zero, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, 1979, and Thirty-Three. As previously mentioned, this was my era, so I can appreciate how different this album was than the normal fare while also staying (mostly) true to itself. So I'll give the fact that it's a double album a little leeway, because 2 hours of Smashing Pumpkins is too goddamned long.

This is one of those albums again, where I really wish I had half stars to play with. The album is so much better than many albums I've rated three stars, but nowhere near as good as most of the albums I've rated 4 stars. I guess I'd give it 3.5 stars if I could. That said, I'm going to lean into recency bias a bit. I gave Dinosaur Jr. three stars yesterday and this album is light years better than that, so 4 stars it is.

Great album. Loved quite a few songs. Would love to add to my collection