Beguiled

"Beguiled" is the debut single from The Smashing Pumpkins' twelfth studio album, ATUM. The song debuted via a TikTok live stream on September 19, 2022. The single and music video were released to streaming services the follow day.

Beguiled is sung from the standpoint of the authoritarian … It sounds kind of like a classic metal chorus, like Priest or something like, but it's actually the authoritarian figures singing. He's saying, ‘Trust the message.’ At the height of the pandemic, we kept saying trust the science. Having been in public life for 35 years, anytime anyone asks you to trust them, that's when I run. So it's a little bit like somebody saying, if you just have faith in what we stand for, everything will be fine.

Background
Billy Corgan wrote the riff at one at one of the early demo sessions for ATUM, and in an unusual move for the band, they did not change the tempo when it came time for proper recording. Corgan told Kerrang! that "that's probably the only thing on the entire record that didn't go through some sort of metamorphosis."

Music video
The music video debuted on a live TikTok stream on September 19, and was formally released the following day. The video was directed by Linda Strawberry and was recorded in one take. The video features cameos from several members of broader SP family, such as Chloe Mendel and her and Corgan's children, Frank Catalano, and members of NWA.