The only love song Billy Corgan ever wrote
During the prime time of grunge, Smashing Pumpkins always seemed to be a touch out of place. While Billy Corgan may have been able to write melodies that fit right in with the sounds of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, his immaculate gift for melody was far more nuanced than what the Seattle scene was doing, creating songs that were indebted as much to classic rock and metal as they were to alternative music. Although the classic lineup of the band made perfect odes to melancholy, it took Corgan years before he could finally write about love.
While many songs from the group’s early career dealt with affairs of the heart, it was always at the expense of Corgan’s emotional well-being. Throughout tracks on Siamese Dream, many of Corgan’s lines come from the perspective of someone trapped in an emotional predicament or at their wit’s end, looking to end it all. Although a song like ‘Disarm’ may seem tame by comparison, the lyrics alluding to suicide bring a layer of emotional vulnerability that most fans might not have been ready for.
That loneliness would only be explored further on their double album experience Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Describing it as a 1990s answer to Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Corgan developed a massive rock opera that took on different themes depending on which side of the album the listener was hearing. Instead of the usual sounds of passion on tracks like ‘Tonight Tonight’, the angry tone on tracks like ‘Jellybelly’ was a change of pace from where they had been going, featuring tracks that reached thrash metal levels of heaviness.
After reinventing themselves yet again on Adore with an electronic tinge to their sound, the next phase of the band began when working on the album Machina, featuring the massive single ‘Stand Inside Your Love’. While Corgan admitted to having the entire idea for the song in his head when working on the track, he revealed he needed help to turn it into a song identifiable as Smashing Pumpkins.
Rather than come from an emotionally raw angle, Corgan wrote about love for the first time in his career, comparing the feeling of romance to finding some spiritual companion in one’s partner. While Corgan would say that it didn’t take him too much time to come up with the lyrics, it would eventually turn into one of the few devotional songs in the band’s canon.
As Corgan would later recall: “The lyrics to the song were, and I’m not joking when I say this, were literally written in 10 minutes. I have the sheet of paper that I wrote the lyrics on, and not one word is different, not one word was ever changed, and it all just came out in this stream of consciousness. To talk about what this song is about, it’s probably one of the only love songs I’ve written.”
Although the album seemed like a new phase for where the band could go, it would be only a few years before everything began disintegrating. With core members James Iha and D’Arcy Wretzsky leaving the fold, Corgan would eventually form Zwan before regrouping with a new lineup years later for albums like Zeitgeist. While Iha would return to the fold later in the group’s career, ‘Stand Inside Your Love’ remains one of the few songs where Corgan presents a romantic side of his personality.
