Alt Rock Autumn; October 16th

It Is Game Day.

It’s game day in Buzzards Bay today. We’re looking at a nice seventy two degrees at kick off and we’re in the heart of Alt Rock Autumn. I’ve kind of gone with more mellow songs the past few days, but today you’re getting a locker room head banger.

The Smashing Pumpkins are making their second return to the Alt Rock Autumn series. They kicked things off with Today, a mellow jam that has light guitar and soft vocals from Billy Corgan, but today we’re turning it up a notch.

Bullet with Butterfly Wings is a head banging song that I used a lot when I got under the squat bar to hit a new personal record this summer and it’s a song that you need to listen to when you’re about to play a football game.

Bullet with Butterfly Wings is the sixth song off the Smashing Pumpkins 1995 album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

The banger hit big in Canada as it was number one on the 1995-1996 Canadian Alternative Rock chart and finished 1995 as the number one Alternative Rock song in Canada. Bullet with Butterfly Wings also topped out at number one on the Iceland charts.

In America, the song was number two on the U.S. Alternative Airplay chart and number four on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart. The song sold north of 500,000 copies and was named Gold.

Bullet with Butterfly Wings has an awesome heavy guitar at the beginning with thumping drums that gets the blood flowing. Throughout the song, the guitar beat goes up and down from heavy and fast to slow and quiet which adds a beautiful dynamic.

Billy Corgan claims that the origin of the song comes from the recording of Siamese Dream where the band played the verse “The world is a vampire” over and over. The band held onto that and when they recorded Landslide, Corgan added the “rat in a cage” portion of the song.

A very interesting part of the song is the way in which Corgan somewhat compares himself to Jesus. The line that exemplifies this is towards the end of the song when Corgan sings “Tell me I’m the chosen one, Jesus was an only son”.

This is arguably the Smashing Pumpkins best song and if you’re any type of athlete, you need need need to have Bullet with Butterfly Wings on your pregame playlist.

GO BUCS.