With blushing brilliance alive Because it's time to arrive.

For tonight's song, I picked To Sheila off the Smashing Pumpkins' 1998 album Adore. I re-discovered the album Adore tonight and fell in love with it all over again.

Anyone who grew up in the 90s or who listens to alternative music is familiar with the work of The Smashing Pumpkins -- they need about as much introduction as Radiohead. That said, Adore is a huge departure from their earlier work and it's an album that was made about ten years before its time.

The album is primarily piano driven, though it still has many of the strings elements of earlier Smashing Pumpkins albums. Billy Corgan's vocals are softer, he loses the nasal whine for which he's so famous. There's a softness to it which you find in a few tracks on Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness -- but in this album the closest relief into the angst-driven more punk songs on Melon Collie to be found on Adore is a layered energy that comes close to Radiohead's buildup of the wall of sound technique.

Adore sold 1.1 million copies and is the lowest grossing Smashing Pumpkins album to date. It received critical acclaim and many indie artists claim it as one of their earliest and greatest musical influences -- but the very innovations in delicate layering which fit right into today's indie music scene are what made it an impossible sell in 1998. As I said earlier in this post, it was an album before its time.

This album is completely fantastic, for all the faults in it due to band member tension. I would recommend this album to almost anyone's music collection.

To Sheila was a release off the album that didn't get much radio play as it didn't fit the mold of what was going on in the music industry at the time.


"Twilight fades
Through blistered Avalon.
The sky's cruel torch
An arching autobahn
Into the uncertain divine.
We scream into the last divine.

You make me real.
You make me real.
Strong as I feel,
You make me real.

Sheila rides on crashing nightingale
Intake eyes leave passing vapor trails
With blushing brilliance alive
Because it's time to arrive.

You make me real.
You make me real.
Strong as I feel,
You make me real.

Lately I just can't seem to believe,
Discard my friends to change the scenery.
It meant the world to hold a bruising faith
But now it's just a matter of grace.

A summer storm graces all of me,
Highway warm sing silent poetry.
I could bring you the light,
And take you home into the night.

You make me real
Lately I just can't seem to believe.
You make me real.
Discard my friends to change the scenery.
Strong as I feel.
It meant the world to hold a bruising faith.
You make me real.
But now it's just a matter of grace."