Here Is No Why

"Here Is No Why" is a song from The Smashing Pumpkins' third studio album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

When asked about the "the death-rock boy" lyrics, Billy Corgan told Rolling Stone, "There’s a lot of me in that lyric. There’s certainly an acknowledgment of that self-absorbed woe-is-me thing. The chorus says a lot: 'In your sad machines you’ll forever stay.' It’s a wink back at the overly dramatic 18-year-old me."

The song was first performed live by Corgan's side project Starchildren at a single show on June 18, 1994. This version has different lyrics and was sometimes known as "Just Between".

Song title
Some believe the title is a nod to the phrase "There is no why" from The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. The phrase, and the song, describes the mindset of people who simply live their lives without questioning their existence.

The title is also reminiscent of Primo Levi's If This Is a Man, about Levi's time as a prisoner in Auschwitz. In the book there is an incident where Levi is thirsty, and breaks off an icicle dangling on the windowsill. A Nazi guard then aims his gun at him. Levi asks him 'Why?' and the guard replies, 'Here there is no why' ('Hier ist kein warum').

In the 2012 reissue of Mellon Collie, Corgan clarified that the "title was appropriated from an article I'd read on an anniversary of the world's first nuclear attacks. A survivor, in surveying a legacy of near-total devastation, had remarked in broken English that 'Here is no why.'"