Most of you are no doubt familiar with the Smashing Pumpkins. I remember the Smashing Pumpkins for many of their hit songs including “1979,” “Tonight Tonight” and “Today.” Yet much of their music could be described as dark. For example “Bullet with Butterfly Wings’” chorus ends with:

Despite all my rage I’m still just a rat in a cage
And I still believe that I cannot be saved
And I still believe that I cannot be saved

Some say the song is about Kurt Cobain’s suicide. Mostly its just about a feeling of helplessness. The Pumpkins’ lead singer, Billy Corgan makes Biblical references with “I suppose I’ll show all my cool and cold-like old Job.”
An even more disturbing lyric comes from “Zero“:

Emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness
And cleanliness is godliness, and god is empty just like me

I don’t play that song all that often due to that lyric. Yet those Zero shirts still sell well on Ebay, for all those emotionally distressed teens who need something to express their self doubt.
The Smashing Pumpkins broke up in 2000. Consequently Billy Corgan formed a new band called “Zwan,” which seemed much more positive in overtones than some of the previous Pumpkins songs. Evidence in this is Zwan’s only album title – “Mary Star of the Sea” – named after a Catholic church in Key West. Compare that to “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,” from which Bullet and Zero come from
Zwan’s big hit, “Honestly” borders on contemporary Christian music depending on how you read it. I managed to snag it on my favorite p2p site. Some good lyrics:

cause there’s no place that I could be without you
it’s too far to discard the life I once knew
honestly, all the weather storms are bringing
are just a picture of my dreams
’cause when I think of you as mine
and allow myself with time
to lead into the life we want
I feel loved, honestly
I feel loved, this honestly

So this begs the question. How does such a positive set of lyrics come from the same mind as lyrics that would say that “God is empty?”
Corgan himself has suffered from clinical depression in the past. I see Corgan’s complex feelings…one song showing rage and anguish…then another song showing kindness and love…as being a parallel to mine…and pretty much everyone’s thought processes.