Billy Corgan: Biggest creep in music?

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Wow, that Yellow Beret song. The pre-Silver Bullet Band comp I found on some disreputable blog is all hippie-psych stuff -- "2+2=?," the big single from it (I think) is pretty representative of the time, with vaguely anti-authoritarian lyrics. Evidently, Seger didn't have much in the way of artistic or moral principles. Maybe he's like that patriotic Wurster character who agrees to write a song for Saddam.

That said, even "fake" psych rock can sound pretty good (see: Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, every single song on every single one of those millions of psych comps), and I was surprised how listenable that comp was.

Smashing Pumpkins = OK. I remembered a couple of the songs from Gish and Siamese Dream that I liked a lot in the 90s and then forgot about. I'm not sure every single song holds up, but I thoroughly enjoyed much of it.

(Edited to fix the name of "2+2=?," which I had misidentified as "2+2=5," which is a Radiohead song)

[masterofsparks]

Yeah, Seger's Ballad of the Yellow Beret is pretty disgusting, but played alongside 2+2=? it becomes more mystifying than anything. A tour through through his early (pre-Silver Bullet Band) stuff finds a guy clearly searching hard for a musical identity, so I have no problem forgiving a misstep like Yellow Beret. It's clearly an anomaly in his catalog, so I'll put it down to a youthful ignorance. We've all said something dumb in our youth, his just happens to have been set to music and pressed to vinyl.

If you haven't heard it, 2+2=? is one of the most powerful anti-war songs of its era.