Shame

"Shame" is a song from The Smashing Pumpkins' fourth studio album, Adore. The recording features a drum machine but it was actually recorded live.

I was feeling really sad one morning. I got up, wrote the song. We went in that day and did it in three hours. What you're hearing is what I felt that day.

Background
Billy Corgan wrote the entire song in roughly 20 minutes on one morning, and the final take was recorded later that day in the studio. While the song came to him quickly, Corgan believes the energy he was feeling was accurately captured in the recording. This was not from a place of pain as it may lyrically come across, but rather a state of contemplation of how to respond to his mother's recent death in the aftermath of the success of Mellon Collie, as was the case for much of the songs on Adore.

Given by now Jimmy Chamberlin had left the band and a drum machine was instead used on the song, Corgan considers "Shame" as one of the final recordings of the "original band", referring to the time when they used a drum machine prior to Chamberlin joining. Just as they recorded in those early days, Corgan, James Iha and D'arcy Wretzky sat in a semi-circle to record the song. Corgan considers the song a "way of saying goodbye" to that version of the band.