nervousacid:

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Earlier this month Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins told the Chicago Tribune’s Greg Kot that the band would no longer be making full-length albums:

We’re done with that. There is no point. People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles, and skip over the rest. The listening patterns have changed, so why are we killing ourselves to do albums, to create balance, and do the arty track to set up the single? It’s done.

Cynical bloggers made fun of Corgan and called the Smashing Pumpkins irrelevant, but in reality, this is quite possibly the most significant psychic shift we’ve seen yet in the digital music age. The fact is, if there was any one band who carried the album-rock banner higher than anyone, it was Smashing Pumpkins. Siamese Dream was easily one of the best rock albums of the ’90s, and Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was simply groundbreaking — the first truly successful experiment in rock album grandeur of that decade. Trivialities aside, Billy Corgan’s relationship with “the Album” — uppercase A, natch — was more storied than that of your typical rock band. “The Album” was a work of art and a cohesive story to him; it was more than just a collection of ten songs. And yet here he is, in 2008, saying, “There is no point. It’s done.” It was, perhaps unconsciously, the most relevant observation that any rock star made this year.