The Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness 180g 4LP Box Set

Ranked #82 - Rolling Stone 100 Best Albums of the Nineties!

The Smashing Pumpkins have created one of the most acclaimed bodies of work in musical history having sold more than 30 million albums, and won multiple Grammy® awards in the process. Formed in Chicago in 1988, they released the nine-time platinum Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness in 1995. The pivotal group's many hits defined the alternative music era and continue to resonate on modern rock radio, influencing a whole new generation.

The album received critical acclaim. Christopher John Farley of Time called the album "the group's most ambitious and accomplished work yet." Farley wrote, "One gets the feeling that the band [...] charged ahead on gut instincts; the sheer scope of the album (28 songs) didn't allow for second-guessing or contrivance." Time selected Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness as the best album of the year in its year-end "Best of 1995" list. Entertainment Weekly gave the album an A rating; reviewer David Browne praised the group's ambition and wrote, "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is more than just the work of a tortured, finicky pop obsessive. Corgan presents himself as one of the last true believers: someone for whom spewing out this much music results in some sort of high art for the ages. He doesn't seem concerned with persistent alterna-rock questions of 'selling out,' and good for him: He's aiming for something bigger and all-conquering."

The songs of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness are intended to hang together conceptually, with the two halves of the album representing day and night. Despite this, Corgan has rejected the term concept album to describe it, and it was at the time described as more "loose" and "vague" than the band's previous records. However, Billy Corgan has also said that the album is based on "the human condition of mortal sorrow." Corgan aimed the album's message at people aged 14 to 24 years, hoping "to sum up all the things I felt as a youth but was never able to voice articulately." He summed up by stating, "I'm waving goodbye to me in the rear view mirror, tying a knot around my youth and putting it under the bed."

The iconic alternative band's fourth album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness fully receives remastered treatment for the first time. The original double album debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 chart, received seven Grammy® Award nominations and featured five hit singles: "Bullet with Butterfly Wings," "1979," "Zero," "Tonight, Tonight," "Muzzle" and "Thirty-Three." The reissue project was remastered from the original analog masters personally overseen by founding member Billy Corgan with extensive bonus material from the Pumpkins' archives. Released in the U.S. for the very first time on vinyl!

The Smashing Pumpkins didn't shy away from making the follow-up to the grand, intricate Siamese Dream. With Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the band turns in one of the most ambitious and indulgent albums in rock history. Lasting over two hours and featuring 28 songs, the album is certainly a challenging listen. To Billy Corgan's credit, it's a rewarding and compelling one as well. Although the artistic scope of the album is immense, The Smashing Pumpkins flourish in such an overblown setting.

Accused of not being punk enough, Corgan showed on Mellon Collie what punk might be if Steven Spielberg got hold of it. The angry songs distend rage and alienation via beautifully ugly guitar-drum attacks, while the wistful ballads flip hate around and turn it into exquisite, unquenchable longing. Take that, hipsters: Ordinary angst can be grand.

We made this kind of dramatic about face at a time when most people would have made an even more expensive idealized statement. We went deep and we went for something expansive sounding-not just expensive sounding.