Mellon Collie and the Fixed Narrative (disc two)

Last time, we met the Smashing Pumpkins and learned that frontman Billy Corgan writes songs with his unsophisticated heart on his sleeve...or at least, that's what a lot of people learned about him from reading reviews of Siamese Dream.

During 1995 Corgan and the band put together a new double album.  Corgan, a 28-year-old male from the midwestern United States, christened the album "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" and chose this artwork for the cover.  Corgan, a millionaire, wrote the line "the world is a vampire" for one song.  Corgan, whose muse had delivered up over fifty original songs in the preceding year, put the line "God is empty, just like me" in one of the songs.  Corgan, a married man, sang one song as if he were watching a girl through a window from a tree outside.  So the songs were, you know...fiction!

Corgan hardly needed to explain that Mellon Collie was a fanciful concept album on which he adopted a perspective at some variance with his own; the only possible alternate explanation would be that in 1967 Corgan's mother had birthed the most singularly self-unaware person in the history of Earth.  However, as rock stars are subjected to innumerable press interviews prior to each album release, he did explain it, again and again, often with extreme clarity and directness regarding the teenager-oriented concept, once even tagging it as "The Wall for Generation X".

After receiving the promotional disc in the mail, our narrative-minded reviewers delivered their consensus verdict:  The music on Mellon Collie was good, but overall it was hard to enjoy because the lyrics were written by Billy Corgan, the heartfelt unsophisticate who had with this new album revealed himself to be the most singularly self-unaware person in the history of Earth. 

I could link to many reviews as a demonstration that this ridiculous consensus exists, but I am lazy and will pick just one representative.  Pitchfork's Ryan Schreiber explains just how much smarter he is than Corgan:

Lyrically, the entire record can be summed up with the refrain of Mellon Collie's first single: "Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage."  It's angst at its arena-rocking worst.  And it only gets more embarrassing as the tracks roll by.  Into the middle of the third track, Billy Corgan's drunk on his angstful glory, barfing up lines like, "God is empty, just like me."  Straight out of a sixth-grade poetry book, this is Billy's lyrical rock-bottom.

Voilà.