The words “TikTok” and “rebellious youth” in the same sentence may seem oxymoronic to some. But not to Billy Corgan, who learned that the kids are now discovering the Smashing Pumpkins through TikTok.
Speaking with iHeart Radio in 2023, Corgan revealed that the band’s social media manager showed him the music community on TikTok. There, he learned that more young people are discovering the Smashing Pumpkins and bands like them. For Corgan, it reminded him of his own rebellious teenage years and of his current approach to engaging with art. That is, listening to and watching everything he was told to stay away from.
He first mentioned the band’s social manager, who started as a Smashing Pumpkins mega-fan. “I felt she understood our world better than someone you would just hire,” he explained. As the social manager, he continued, “She’s seen a lot of growth with us on TikTok, which obviously is very youth-oriented.
“She said one of her favorite comments was, she talked to a fan and she said, ‘Why do you like the band?’” Corgan added. “And [the fan] said, ‘Because other people told me not to like the band.’”
Billy Corgan On Today’s Rebellious Teenagers Discovering His Band
For Billy Corgan, this seems like a great honor. Someone is forbidden from listening to your band, but they choose to listen anyway? Sounds pretty good. But more than that, it resonated with the way Corgan consumes media as well.
“That’s kind of the way I am,” he said. “If I read a really bad movie review, I’ll go out of my way to see the movie. And eight times out of ten it’s actually a really good movie, and it’s because somebody has a bone to pick.”
He continued, “Culture moves in all these kind of undercurrents, and alternative music, by and large, is supposed to be counter to mainstream culture. But when you interface with mainstream culture, they go ‘Oh my God, what is this weird thing you’ve done?’”
Corgan related this to the 1993 release of Siamese Dream, the Smashing Pumpkins’ second album. Noting that it’s one of the band’s most “highly regarded albums,” he then pointed out that it didn’t exactly get glowing reviews.
“At the time [Siamese Dream] came out in 1993, it got a horrible review in Rolling Stone,” he said. “[They] said it was way over-produced, harkening back to an era of rock that is dead, and all this stuff. Nobody says that now, so was that person right, or were we right for kind of picking where the culture was going? That’s what’s always difficult about making art is it’s not always for everyone in that moment.”
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