Songoftheday 8/20/20 - Speak to me in a language I can hear, humor me before I have to go...

 

 

"Thirty-Three" - Smashing Pumpkins

from the album Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness (1995)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #39 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 2

 

Today's song of the day comes from alternative rockers Smashing Pumpkins, whose double-disc masterpiece Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness won rave reviews, landed the band's only #1 album, and already scored three top-40 pop hits with "Bullet With Butterfly Wings", "1979", and "Tonight, Tonight". Another two tracks from the set, "Zero" and "Muzzle", had reached the top ten on the Alternative Rock radio chart (#9 and #8 respectively), and made the airplay portion of the Hot 100 as well (#49 and #57 respectively). The fourth and final commercial single from the double album was "Thirty Three", written by Billy Corgan, who produced the record with Flood and Alan Moulder. 

 "Thirty-Three" became the fourth top-40 pop single from Mellon Collie in February of 1997. The song was a huge rock radio hit, spending a week at #2 on Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock chart and getting to #18 on the Mainstream Rock list. Internationally the single climbed all the way to #7 in New Zealand, and made the top-40 in the UK (#21) and Canada (#24). 

Despite the success, the timing of this single was a tumultuous one for the band, with the overdose death of keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin (brother of Wendy and Susannah of Prince's old band) and the subsequent arrest and firing of drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, who was complicit in that tragedy. During the rest of 1997, the rest of the band, with replacements Matt Walker and Dennis Flemion, contributed two songs to movie soundtracks that are as much a vital part of their work as the group's studio albums. Both "Eye", from the David Lynch film The Lost Highway, and "The End Is The Beginning Is The End", from the franchise flick Batman & Robin, reached the top ten on Billboard's Alternative Rock chart (#8 and #4 respectively), and the top half of the Hot 100 Airplay list (at #49 and #50). The latter song went on to win a Grammy Award for Best Hard Performance in 1998. It even gave them a second and final hit on the Dance Club Play chart at #34, and reached the top ten in the UK at #10.

In 1998, the band returned with their next album, Adore, which veered to electro-rock territory. Lead single "Ava Adore" was another success on rock radio, reaching the top ten on both the Alternative (two weeks at #3) and Mainstream (#8) rock charts, but stalled right under the pop top-40 at #42 (it almost made the top ten in Britain at #11). The follow-up, "Perfect", was a moderate success on the Adult Top-40 radio format at #31, while spending a month at #3 on the Alternative Rock list, but stopped at #54 on the pop Hot 100. The album was nominated for Best Alternative Rock Album, which they lost to the Beastie Boys for Hello Nasty, signalling a shift in what that genre encompassed. 

The Smashing Pumpkins began the new millennium with what was originally intended to be their last album, Machina/The Machines Of God, which brought Chamberlin back into the fold. The record gave the band two more top ten Alternative Rock hits in "The Everlasting Gaze" (#4) and "Stand Inside Your Love" (three weeks at #2), but both songs only "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 chart. The latter though scored their most recent British top-40 hit at #23. After bassist D'Arcy Wretsky left right after recording the album before the tour, replaced by Hole's Melissa Auf de Maur, Corgan dissolved the band after those series of concerts. He attempted to form another band with Zwan which scored a top ten Alternative rock hit with "Honestly" (AR #7, MR#21), but scrapped that in no time flat. 

Corgan decided to reform the Pumpkins in 2005 with Chamberlin, though Iha, Wretsky, or Auf De Maur passed. Two years of shows later, the band released its seventh regular album Zeitgeist. The first single "Tarantula" took four weeks at #2 on Billboard's Alternative Rock chart, and climbed to #54 on the pop Hot 100. Since then, Corgan has released three more albums under the Smashing Pumpkins name, which the most recent, Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1: No Past, No Future, No Sun, came out in 2018, and saw the return of Iha and Chamberlin. From that set the song "Solara" reached #26 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart, while "Silvery Sometimes (Ghosts)" slipped on to the Alternative Rock list at #38, while the album itself went to #54 on the Billboard 200 sales chart. 

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's the band performing the song on VH1's Storytellers and explaining the track...

and live in concert in 2018...

and lastly, an acoustic gig in Berlin...

Up tomorrow: Singer/songwriter is gasping for air.