1979 is a song by The Smashing Pumpkins. It was released in January 23, 1996 as the second single from their third studio album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. 1979 was written by frontman Billy Corgan, and features loops and samples uncharacteristic of previous The Smashing Pumpkins songs. The song was written as a nostalgic coming-of-age story by Corgan. In the year 1979, Corgan was twelve, and this is what he considered his transition into adolescence. 1979 reached number two in Canada and Iceland, number six in Ireland, number nine in New Zealand, and number 12 in the United States.
It charted within the top 20 in several other countries, including Australia and the United Kingdom. The song was nominated for the Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal at the 39th Annual Grammy Awards, and won an MTV Video Music Award for Best Alternative Video. In 2012, it was voted the second best Smashing Pumpkins song by Rolling Stone readers.
Tracklist:
- 1979
- Ugly
- The Boy
- Cherry
- Believe
- Set the Ray to Jerry
The music video for 1979 was directed by the team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who had previously directed the music video for Rocket. The video follows a day in the life of disaffected suburban teenagers driving around in a 1972 Dodge Charger. It is based on a concept Corgan created, featuring an idealized version of teenage life, while also trying to capture the feeling of being bored in the Chicago suburbs, where Corgan grew up. In the video the Dodge Charger has Illinois license plates, although in the driving scenes the mountains of California are visible in the background shots.
Originally, Corgan wanted a scene of violence, in which the convenience store was trashed by the teens at the end of the video, but Dayton and Faris convinced him to go for something tamer. Aside from Corgan appearing throughout the video in the backseat of a car, the other band members had small parts in the video; James Iha appears as a convenience store clerk, D’arcy Wretzky as an irate neighbor, Jimmy Chamberlin as a policeman, and all three of them appear together as the band in the party scene.
Band manager Gooch plays Jimmy‘s partner. The 1979 video was highly acclaimed. It won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Alternative Video in 1996. It was one of Canadian cable television music channel MuchMusic‘s Countdown number one videos of 1996. Billy Corgan considers it the Pumpkins’ best video, calling it “the closest we’ve ever come to realizing everything we wanted.”
The Smashing Pumpkins
Jimmy Chamberlin: drums
Billy Corgan: lead vocals, lead and rhythm guitar
James Iha: rhythm and lead guitar
D’arcy Wretzky: bass guitar
