Like everyone currently slumped over life’s jukebox, Courtney Love is convinced that this Smashing Pumpkins song is about her—they’re all about her—and no, you need to call a taxi. Possibly in search of some late-night halal, Love recently wandered into BBC Radio 6, where she slurred about some of her musical influences—specifically the music that she influenced, a list she says includes nearly all of Smashing Pumpkins’ best-known songs. Unfortunately for him, Love says, Billy Corgan “stopped writing about me and stopped having hits” (choosing instead to write for her and stop having hits), leaving him in a place where “he just can’t seem to get over the lump and become relevant again.” These assertions were made nearly in the same, presumably hot breath, with Love once again hearing only what she wanted in them.
“There’s one on Siamese Dream called ‘Spaceboy’—that’s about his brother, but the rest are all pretty much about me,” Love said, specifically naming “Today,” a song written about the depths of depression that nearly drove Corgan to suicide, as obviously being about their relationship. In addition to the rest of Siamese Dream, an album in which Corgan lashes out at an awful person he’s desperately trying to get away from while begging them to be quiet, Love says she also inspired the songs “Tonight Tonight” (presumably the line, “And you know you’re never sure / But you’re sure you could be right”) and “Bodies,” which contains the telling refrain, “Love is suicide.”
“They’re not all about me,” Love allows graciously, adding that “another girl coming around” inspired much of Mellon Collie, and that Corgan wrote “Where Boys Fear To Tread” about her romance with Trent Reznor and “about how mad he was about that.” To her credit, that song does reference “a dark prince of death,” and Trent Reznor sang goth songs. It also uses the word “love,” which actually demonstrates admirable restraint on Courtney Love’s part, for not automatically assuming that the bulk of the pop music catalog is about her.
Contrary to Love’s assertions that he’s no longer writing about her, Billy Corgan continues to create plenty of rambling messes no one wants to listen to.