Night Music: Smashing Pumpkins, “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”

Ok. I’m just going to say it. This video is super awful and super powerful, but the song is mostly just powerful.

In other words, the video lowers the median score, unfairly I think. It’s a song!

Dynamics, explosive language, heavy guitars and propulsive rhythm, lots of bottom as it were, and some swing, too. The Pumpkins were feeling it, they weren’t machines, not by half.

So much of our appreciation and hatred for tunes comes from context. Smashing Pumpkins’ legacy has been colored by the declines of the band’s personalities, especially head genius Billy Corgan (who loves cats). But sorry, this isn’t fair! He loves cats! And dogs, too. We need to be fresh about these canards that are too easy.

As an antidote, here is this. I make no claim about the character of the artists, but the fact that they made this song (not the video) is worthy of massive respect.

After that, let God sort them out.

2 thoughts on “Night Music: Smashing Pumpkins, “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”

  1. Great song. Saw the Pumpkins at Lollapallooza in ’93, i think (with Hole and a great Parliment).

    I thought a lot of the band’s disintegration was relationship issues between Darcy and James, along with Jimmy Chamberlain’s drug problems?

    Big fan of the Pumpkins, though.

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