Siamese Dream

Why it matters

Billy Corgan buried his misery under so many layers of overdubbed guitar that despair came out sounding like a sunrise, and "Today" — a suicide note sung as a jangling anthem — is the proof.

That contradiction runs the whole record: the beauty is real and so is the rot underneath it. Butch Vig and Corgan reportedly stacked guitar tracks by the dozen until "Soma" swells from a single fragile piano into a roaring flood and back again, and the strings on "Disarm" turn a song about broken childhood into something almost hymnlike. Corgan famously played most of those parts himself, chasing a sound in his head with a perfectionism that nearly wrecked the band making it. What survives is an album where every gorgeous wall of noise carries a knife inside it.

Listen

Tracklist

1. 01Cherub Rock4:58
2. 02Quiet3:42
3. 03Today3:20
4. 04Hummer6:57
5. 05Rocket4:07
6. 06Disarm3:17
7. 07Soma6:40
8. 08Geek U.S.A.5:14
9. 09Mayonaise5:50
10. 10Spaceboy3:59
11. 11Silverfuck9:13
12. 12Sweet Sweet1:39
13. 13Luna3:20