Purple Blood

"Purple Blood" is a single from The Smashing Pumpkins' eleventh studio album, CYR. It was released on November 20, 2020 with "Dulcet in E" as the backing A-side. The music video was released a week later as part of the In Ashes five-part animated series.

Rolling Stone boasted "Purple Blood" as having a "classic Pumpkins feel, with Billy Corgan lacing his vocals over a big guitar crunch, heavy drums, and some moody atmospheric synth textures," while AllMusic highlighted the "gently melancholic" song "Dulcet in E" as one of CYR's recommended tracks, adding that the "soft loneliness recalls other sadly beautiful songs the band have offered up since the early '90s."

Background
Billy Corgan believes "Purple Blood" to be the last song written for CYR, sometime during the Summer 2019 tour. He attributes the vibe of the song to "spooky" 90's and 80's feels, as well as early 70's synth like Gary Wright's "Dream Weaver". He further explained the song didn't quite come out as he expected: I didn't go as far with "Purple Blood" as maybe I would have or should have but that's kind of what I like about it. It feels kind of like an incomplete picture, postcard or like a Polaroid that's been stepped on … it's a bit mangled but sometimes you need imperfection to create the perfect mood that you're after. The vocals for the song took about a day to arrange, which holds true for most songs on CYR.

In the Thirty-Three podcast, Corgan explained that the title "Purple Blood" is a reference to the term blue blood used to describe royal families and nobility, especially in ancient times. He also said the title is a reference to his genetic condition causing him to have thick blood. It is unclear what condition he was referring to; it may have been hereditary haemochromatosis, but more likely it is his well-known condition of having port-wine stains.

Music video
The music video was released on November 27, 2020 exclusively on Apple Music and later on YouTube on December 4. The video served as the fifth and final episode of the five-part animated series In Ashes.

Additional personnel

 * Katie Cole – background vocals
 * Sierra Swan – background vocals