(Credits: Far Out / Virgin Records)
Fri 15 August 2025 3:00, UK
Yes, I know, a Smashing Pumpkins song is “secretly” depressing. Next thing you know, I’ll be telling you a Madness song is “secretly” silly, or an AC/DC song is “secretly” loud.
I am aware of the reputation Smashing Pumpkins have, and it’s one that they’ve earned with aplomb. They came to prominence in the famously gloomy grunge scene of the early 1990s, and were arguably the gloomiest of the lot, having none of Nirvana’s glowering anger, Pearl Jam’s well-earned hope or Hole’s scathing defiance.
What the Pumpkins had was sheer, desolate nihilism. Seriously, the only band of that era that rivalled them for the sheer depths of despair their music could take a listener was Nine Inch Nails, and that’s absolutely a toss-up. Arguably, the thing that saved both bands from being nothing more than navel-gazing bores is the scope and energy of their music. Just as Nine Inch Nails pushed the boundaries of industrial rock, Billy Corgan’s misfit mob showed the sense of scale that could be achieved with the grunge scene.
With all that in mind, ‘Today’ seemed to be a space to breathe within their extensive back catalogue. Floating in on a sprightly guitar figure, the second single from their 1993 masterpiece Siamese Dream is, on the surface, a delicious slice of guitar pop candy-floss. Effortlessly catchy, built on one of the most recognisable pop chord sequences ever made and with a swooning vocal hook about how “today is the greatest day I’ve ever known”.
Tucked into a back catalogue mainly built around examinations of Corgan’s barely concealed sociopathy, this is something of a nice change of pace. After all, a band can’t live on songs about how awful it is to be alive all the time. ‘Today’ could be a beam of sunlight finally breaking through storm clouds when you need it most, convincing you that, sure, life is hard sometimes, but it’s worth it for the good times, right? Right?!
What is the sting in the tail of ‘Today’ by Smashing Pumpkins?
Not only is the reveal of ‘Today’ extremely typical of Smashing Pumpkins as a band, it’s extremely typical of the 1990s era it came from. 1993 was a time when eye-rolling irony was at an even bigger peak than it is today, and almost as a direct response to that, ‘Today’ is, sing it with me now, sarcastic! It’s not even hidden that deep, but Corgan’s voice has always been a difficult one to make out the consonants of. Once you get past the “today is the greatest day” hook, it all sort of blends into one.
However, sitting down with the lyric sheet, you can find that the lead singer isn’t exactly hiding his sarcasm that much. The more you listen to the song, the more you realise that when he talks about tomorrow, he’s talking about a day he might not see. After all, as he says in the second verse, “I can’t wait for tomorrow / I might not have that long”. He’s speaking very literally because the song was written at a time when Corgan was at his lowest.
The era of Siamese Dream seems like one of the calmest in the band’s history, at least in terms of the band staying together with the same lineup for the longest time. However, tensions within the band were threatening to pull the whole thing down before they got started. Their debut album, Gish, was a decent success, but Nirvana had completely redefined what counted as “success” in the world of alternative rock. Suddenly, everyone viewed the band as “the next Nirvana” and no one felt that pressure harder than Corgan.
He took the role of band leader seriously. Despite a myriad of inter-band tensions, he kept them from falling apart through sheer force of will, asserting his authority over his bandmates, both in and out of the studio. ‘Today’ is an expression of just how much of a toll that effort took on his mental health.
A shiny pop song built for radio play about how the struggle to produce shiny pop songs built for radio play was slowly killing him, I wonder how he must have felt when ‘Today’ became the Pumpkins’ breakout hit.
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