Songoftheday 5/21/20 - Time is never time at all, you can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth...

"Tonight, Tonight" - Smashing Pumpkins
from the album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 6

Today's song of the day comes from the alternative rock band Smashing Pumpkins, whose grandiose two-disc opus Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness had already landed a pair of top-40 pop hits with "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" and "1979". At the start of 1996, the band promoted the album track "Zero" to radio without releasing a single, and while it did pretty well on rock stations, making both the Mainstream (#15) and Alternative (#9) format charts, it didn't get quite enough pop airplay to make the top-40 on the Hot 100 Airplay list, stalling at #49. For the fourth release, a physical single was put out, and the softer-toned "Tonight, Tonight" was a better choice for mainstream radio. Written by lead singer Billy Corgan, who produced the track with Flood and Alan Moulder, the song is a reflection on youth and the realization of their own mortality, and the struggle to keep things right and make a mark. The music video was based on the black-and-white film A Trip To The Moon, which blended with the artwork for the album...

"Tonight, Tonight" became Smashing Pumpkins' third top-40 pop hit from the Mellon Collie album in August of 1996. The song reached the top five on both the Alternative (#4) and Mainstream (#5) Rock radio charts in Billboard magazine. It also got to #14 on their Triple-A (Adult Album Alternative) rock format list. Internationally, the single went to #1 in Iceland, peaked at #2 in New Zealand and #7 in the UK, and made the Top-40 in Ireland (#13), Australia (#21), Canada (#32), and Belgium (#39). At the Grammy Awards in 1997 they were up for Best Music Video, which they criminally lost to the Beatles' "Free As A Bird" clip.

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Here's the band at the MTV Music Video Awards, where the clip won six trophies...