Smashing Pumpkins’ third studio album was a sprawling, two-disc opus that became an unlikely hit in 1975. Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness combines the band’s typical heavy metal and grunge sound with softer, more experimental songs, resulting in a 28-track marathon.
There’s a theory that every double album would be better if culled down to its best 12 songs (see my recent editing of Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department). That is definitely the case with this one.
More than half of Melon Collie features the loud, guitar-heavy thrash that sends me right out the door. I’m sure fans find a lot to love in those songs, but I’ll have to pass.
But the handful of songs with a mellower vibe are quite lovely. I don’t know if I’d get to 12, but I could make a 5-7 track playlist of this album that I’d really enjoy.
The keepers would include singles ‘Tonight, Tonight,’ ‘Thirty-Three,’ and ‘1979.’ ‘1979’ is the best thing here, a nostalgic bit of synth-pop that sounds unlike anything else on the album.
Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness sold 5 million copies in the U.S., achieving Diamond status and giving the band their biggest hit. It produced four top 40 singles, the only ones they’d ever release.
Shakedown 1979
Cool kids never have the time
On a live wire right up off the street
You and I should meet
[Verse 2]
Junebug skippin’ like a stone
With the headlights pointed at the dawn
We were sure we’d never see an end to it all
[Chorus 1]
And I don’t even care
To shake these zipper blues
And we don’t know
Just where our bones will rest
To dust I guess
Forgotten and absorbed into the earth
Below
[Verse 3]
Double-cross the vacant and the bored
They’re not sure just what we have in store
Morphine city slippin’ dues, down to see
[Chorus 2]
That we don’t even care
As restless as we are
We feel the pull
In the land of a thousand guilts
And poured cement
[Bridge]
Lamented and assured
To the lights and towns below
Faster than the speed of sound
Faster than we thought we’d go
Beneath the sound of hope
[Verse 4]
Justine never knew the rules
Hung down with the freaks and ghouls
No apologies ever need be made
I know you better than you fake it, to see
[Chorus 1]
That we don’t even care
To shake these zipper blues
And we don’t know
Just where our bones will rest
To dust I guess
Forgotten and absorbed into the earth
Below
[Outro]
The street heats the urgency of now
As you see there’s no one around
Meet Me In Montauk 
I suspect I would like your 5 to 7 song version of this album as I too have no use for the heavy grunge sound.