Thirty Three is a song by the Smashing Pumpkins. It was the fifth and final single from their third album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, in November 11, 1996. It was the first single released after the firing of Jimmy Chamberlin and death of Jonathan Melvoin. The song peaked at 39 on the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming the band’s fourth and final top 40 hit there, number seven in New Zealand and the top 30 in Canada and the United Kingdom. In Canada, it coincidentally finished at number 33 on the RPM Alternative 30 year-end chart for 1997.
The song was described by Billy Corgan as “a simple song in a country tuning”, and was the first song that he wrote after the Siamese Dream tour. The guitars in the song are tuned to EGBGBE half a step down, and the drum machine track is exactly the same track Corgan recorded when he laid down the demo version of the song, because he was unable to recreate it.
In a taping of VH1 Storytellers on August 24, 2000, Corgan joked that he planned on making “Thirty-Three”, “Sixty-Six”, and “Ninety-Nine”, but only finished “Thirty-Three”.
When the band released their greatest hits collection in 2001, Thirty-Three made neither the international nor the US version. It was included, however, on the Greatest Hits Video Collection.
Tracklist:
- Thirty Three
- The Last Song
- The Aeroplane Flies High (Turns Left, Looks Right)
- Transformer
- The Bells
- My Blue Heaven
The music video for Thirty-Three, directed both by Billy Corgan and then-girlfriend Yelena Yemchuk, is a series of images shot in stop-motion, ending with a re-enactment of the Mellon Collie album cover. Jimmy Chamberlin is notably absent from shots of the band. Although the group’s videos habitually avoid the literal interpretation of a song’s lyrics, the video for Thirty-Three was created with images closely related to the words of the song, as an intentional stylistic departure.
The Smashing Pumpkins
Jimmy Chamberlin: drums
Billy Corgan: lead vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, piano, keyboards, autoharp, production, mixing, art direction and design
James Iha: rhythm and lead guitar, vocals
D’arcy Wretzky: bass guitar
