Transcript
A (0:00)
Sa. They're playing our Song, the podcast where we make your song our song. I'm Robert Berry Crews. I'm your host, and I'm joined again by my lovely wife, Diana. Hi, Diana.
B (0:37)
Hello.
A (0:38)
Thank you so much for coming again. So the purpose of this show is to talk about songs that are other people's songs. But given the fact that this is kind of an amateur production, sometimes we're going to talk about songs that are my song or Diana's song. So today we're going to actually dig deep into my back catalog and talk about Tonight. Tonight by the Smashing Pumpkins. Now, this song came out on their 1996 album Melancholy in the Infinite Sadness. You might remember it if you grew up in the 90s with that kind of cherub on the frond big double album. It is really notable for being, as Rolling Stones called it, the Pumpkins at their finest. If you aren't really a big grunge person, the Smashing Pumpkins were sort of one of the big trifecta of the, you know, kind of post Nirvana wave of music coming out. This song was pretty popular, both for itself and also for the music video, which we will talk about a little bit later. Now, Diana, I know this is kind of my song. So we sort of talked about how we're going to do this, so I figured we'll just kind of do our musical notes like we normally would, and then we'll sort of just. Just talk about. Kind of talk about the song. So hopefully I won't take all the conversation away. One of the reasons I love this song, sort of like we talked about last time when we talked about round here, is it really came out at a very important time in my life. I was a teenager and I was just starting to listen to music. This was not the first CD I bought. I actually didn't own the CD for a long time, but I had a friend who would always let me play it when we drive somewhere in their car and we go to play practice or debate meet or whatever it was. And I'm like, oh, why don't we listen to this? And after a while, they knew I was gonna ask for it, so I had to try to be more subtle. Like, I don't know, guys, maybe we could listen to Smashing Pumpkins. I don't think I actually owned this till I was about 18, so many years later, but I liked listening to it. And then this one is this song especially. So that's really the first time I heard this song, I think, just sort of riding around and some. Oh, listen to this. Why don't you listen to this album? And it just. It seemed very different than anything I been listening to. Was this something that you listened to back then, Diane, or something you heard later on?
B (2:53)
I did hear it back then. My friend Kim's brother had this album.
A (3:02)
End of anecdote. Okay. Now, one of the things I think is really cool about the album as a whole, but this song especially is the shifts that it takes between sort of a. Like a grungy hard rock sound and the sound of tonight. Tonight, this big orchestral sound. You know, you've got the guitar, James E. Hawn guitar. You've got sort of the light plucking. You've got the Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing in the background. If you'd been listening to the album as a whole, you heard the very first song was, you know, piano Melody. The song right after this goes right into kind of that hard rock, you know, screaming, wailing guitars and. And that kind of is the album. It's sort of all over the place. I prefer these songs myself. I'm a huge fan of anything. If you've got an orchestra in the background, I probably will enjoy your song to some extent. I don't know. Diana, have you ever been a big Billy Corgan lyrics person? I know you. You have a huge background with poetry. And I know that's usually what he seems to think he's writing. I don't know if it's always true.