Billy Corgan Has 21 Songs For A "Pretty Different" New Smashing Pumpkins Album
There's a new Smashing Pumpkins album in the works.
Billy Corgan has clearly been very busy lately. Not only did he release his extremely enjoyable new solo album Cotillions back in November, he's also revealed that he's been working on a new Smashing Pumpkins album for "over a year".
And it sounds as though progress on the follow-up to 2018's Shiny And Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun album is going incredibly well, with the frontman telling 102.9 The Buzz in an interview that he has a great deal of material for the band's new effort – their 11th album overall.
"It's currently 21 songs," Billy says. "I've been working on it for over a year. It's pretty different – in a good way, I think. Everybody that's heard it likes it a lot, so that's a good sign. We're gonna do some touring. We're playing a big festival in Atlanta, I think in April or May: Shaky Knees. I'm not sure we're playing Nashville this year. Actually, I think we might. I might be giving a secret away. We might be doing a little 'surprisey' gig soon."
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Speaking to Kerrang! ahead of Shiny And Oh So Bright, Vol. 1's release, Billy had already alluded to the fact that there would be more new music on the way, revealing: “We’re in this weird place of, ‘Let’s finish this [tour and album release] and then make some decisions. We’re definitely making plans to record another LP, with the idea it will come out at the end of next year.
“There are obviously more shows being talked about [but] I wasn’t sure, going in, that there would be more tours,” he added of their live plans. “I thought, if this is going to be it, we’re going to go out swinging. If this is the last show, let’s give it our best go. Let’s play this set we never played, let’s be the band we never were, one time.”
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Presumably Billy's new workings with feature Jimmy Chamberlin and James Iha, (along with longtime guitarist Jeff Schroeder), who reunited for the first time in over 18 years on their latest album.
In an interview about their reunion, Billy told Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1 show: "I think that’s why we’re a good unit because we started with nothing. We have that honesty with each other. The moment James Iha walked in my life, changed my life forever. The moment Jimmy walked in our life, changed our lives forever. Doesn’t mean every day was perfect and we held hands and sang around the campfire. But somehow, in the midst of our own individual and collective chaos, we were able to make these diamonds. That is the shared thing. And we all at the end of the day still kind of scratch our head because we don’t even really know what we did right."