1979

"1979" is the second single from The Smashing Pumpkins' third studio album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. "1979" was written by frontman Billy Corgan, and features loops and samples uncharacteristic of previous Smashing Pumpkins songs. The song was written as a nostalgic coming of age story by Corgan. In the year 1979, Corgan was 12 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.

Background and meaning
In the first episode of the Thirty-Three with William Patrick Corgan podcast (2022), Corgan went into more detail about the meaning behind the song than he has in previous interviews. He stated the year 1979 was arbitrarily written in a poem that eventually became the lyrics, but it does refer to a coming of age period. More specifically, the year is probably around 1984, a time during which Corgan was still caring for his two younger brothers.

Corgan recalled a specific moment on a cold, rainy day in Chicago, where he was driving in a car and stopped at a stoplight. There was a particular feeling he got, "in the rear view mirror of my life was youth, childhood, and it was about to go away, and in front of me was everything that I hoped to become, everything that I was hoping to do in life." It is this feeling that the song is meant to describe.

The lyrics are from a poem that Corgan wrote in a single sitting, with the first line being "shakedown 1979." In the recording, he's actually saying "shakdown nineteen seven nine", because he thought "seventy-nine" didn't have the same ring to it. Corgan wrote the riff for the song one morning while watching Regis and Kathie Lee. That connection is apparently what got him invited to appear on the show twice.

Recording
According to statements in interviews, Corgan worked nonstop after the Siamese Dream tour and wrote about 56 songs for Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the last of which was "1979". As the Mellon Collie sessions came to a conclusion, "1979" (which evolved out of a demo called "Strolling" ) was just a couple of chord changes and a snippet of a melody without words. The band had tried repeatedly to record the main riff, but it sounded like "really bad Rolling Stones". When the time came to choose the songs that were to appear on the album, producer Flood said that "1979" was "not good enough". He gave Corgan a mere 24 hours to finish the song or it was off the record. This, however, inspired Corgan to finish it in four hours. The next day, Flood heard "1979" once and decided immediately to put it on the album. Everything in the final recording except the vocals is from the same 12 hours on the final day of recording. Corgan considers "1979" the most personally important song on Mellon Collie.

Reputedly the song was influenced by "Pleasure" by The Frogs. According to the band's frontman, Jimmy Flemion, a demo tape of "Pleasure" was shared with Corgan in 1993, two years prior to "1979" being penned. In a live performance, Flemion playfully accused Corgan of ripping him off and said "watch the papers for the lawsuit". Similarly, Peter Hook reportedly said he thought the song was a ripoff of New Order and Joy Division, which Corgan has admitted the song does make a nod to.

The song features a sample of Corgan's voice repeated throughout. During recording, Corgan was singing "today" as the melody line, so he and Flood decided to record him singing to a tape. The pair electronically manipulated several samples and looped them against a drumbeat.

The most frequently asked question about '1979' is, 'What is the 'ooh-ahh-ahh' sound at the end of every phrase?' Flood and I were tracking the song, and I started humming the 'oohs' like a melody line. I sang them to tape, we sampled the pertinent ones, electronically manipulated them, and looped them against the drum beat. One of my favorite songs from the album. Producer Alan Moulder told Tape-Op, "That's a classic Flood production: the vocal effects and the Kurzweil distortion on the drums. I think once they decided how to do it, it came together rather quickly. That was a special song."

The song was written and recorded using a 1960s-era Kimberly Bison guitar that Corgan bought for $60 at a pawn shop. Nicknamed "Kimberly Kay", this is the same "secret weapon" guitar that was used on "Mayonaise" and "Panopticon".

Having a more electronic sound deviating from the traditional Smashing Pumpkins sound at the time, Corgan was hesitant to release it as a single. Corgan has said Virgin Records had to beg him to allow it to be released.

Reception
"1979" is the Smashing Pumpkins' highest-charting single, reaching number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Mainstream Rock Tracks and on the Modern Rock Tracks charts. Virgin credited the inclusion of the single's bonus tracks for driving sales. The song was nominated for the Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal at the 1997 Grammy Awards. Pitchfork Media included the song at number 21 on their Top 200 Tracks of the 90s and said "'1979' was Billy Corgan asking, 'You know this feeling?' and the second you heard that guitar line the immediate answer was, 'I do-- tell me more.'"

In a 1996 Spin interview, Corgan indicated that "1979" was probably the only indication he had for what the next Pumpkins album would sound like, "something that combines technology, and a rock sensibility, and pop, and whatever, and hopefully clicks. Between 'Bullet with Butterfly Wings' and '1979' you have the bookends of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. You've literally [heard] the end of the rock thing, and the beginning of the new thing".

The song was voted #13 on Triple J Hottest 100 in 1996, it was later voted #71 on the Hottest 100 of All Time in 1998, #35 on the 2009 edition and #21 on the Hottest 100 of the Past 20 Years in 2013.

Music video
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". Originally, the band approached another director (possibly Spike Jonze ) to film the video for "1979". His idea was that all the band members were residents in an alien hotel and they were all going to have specially made alien-elephant masks. This video would have cost over a million dollars.

The video follows a day in the life of disaffected suburban teenagers driving around in a 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 four of them appear together as the band in the party scene. Band manager "Gooch" plays Jimmy's partner.

Upon finishing the video shoot, the band flew to New York to perform. However, all tapes of the footage were accidentally left sitting on top of a car, and were lost as the driver departed. The group later flew back to re-shoot the party scene.

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 has considered it the Pumpkins' best video, calling it "the closest we've ever come to realizing everything we wanted."

The video for the 1998 song "Perfect" is a sequel to this one, and involves the same characters who are now older. The aforementioned incident with the loss of the original footage is parodied in one of the later video's final scenes, in which a cassette tape is left on top of a car and falls off as a character drives out of a parking lot at high speed, and is subsequently destroyed by another vehicle.

Secrets

 * At 1:03, you may hear the jingle of a bell.
 * At 2:07 you may hear what sounds like a helicopter. a DJ says the echoing is a burp that is reversed and then screwed around with.
 * There is a "whistling" noise in the background at 2:55-2:58 (left channel).
 * At 4:08 there's some sort of beeping.

Track listing
Tracks 1, 2, and 4 are remixed by Roli Mosimann. Track 3 is remixed by Moby.

Licensed uses
The song is used in Clerks II and during the credits of Gran Turismo 5. It was also released as downloadable content for Guitar Hero World Tour. It was also part of the soundtrack of Grand Theft Auto IV as part of the fictional Liberty Rock Radio station until April 2018 when Rockstar Games' ten-year license to the song expired. In 2020, boy band Why Don't We heavily sampled the song in their single "Slow Down".