Ep. 247: Billy Corgan | How He Built Smashing Pumpkins Into a 30-Million Album Empire
And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan
And The Writer Is
4.9 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2026
⏱️ 130 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today's guest is the architect of alternative rock who sold 30 million albums and defined the sound of an entire generation — but whose real story begins after the hits stopped mattering to him.
From the suburbs of Chicago to the apex of 90s mainstream success, Billy Corgan built an empire. Then he spent the last 20 years quietly dismantling the idea that commercial success is the same thing as real value. He carries three things simultaneously that most artists never figure out how to hold at once: the ambition of someone who was never going to settle for the midwest, the technical genius of a classically-trained musician who produces every layer of his own work, and the philosophical rigor of someone willing to completely reimagine what success actually means.
This is one of the more unflinching conversations about what staying relevant actually costs — not the version that gets posted on socials, the version that gets lived in the real decisions you make about art, money, independence, and how you want to spend your time. When the gatekeepers are gone and nobody's controlling the narrative anymore, who do you become?
And The Writer Is... Billy Corgan!
In this episode of And The Writer Is, we go deep on:
• The trap of being defined by your greatest hits — and why he refuses it
• His father's failed music career, and the moment his dad finally understood
• Chicago's inward-facing indie scene and the cost of communities that don't believe in themselves
• How the value of artists gets assessed in rooms — and why that's broken
• What "influence" actually means vs. commercial success
• The gatekeepers are gone — what that really means for independent artists
• Owning 100% of your publishing and why that changes everything
• Building a new world where direct artist support is how things actually work
• Why legacy thinking is changing, and what comes next
And much more...
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Chapter timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:30 Why Billy doesn't prefer to talk about his hits, and how his legacy has adjusted
5:00 Dad's bitterness: you got lucky
6:30 Dad's realization "You're one of the best songwriters in the world"
8:00 Independent music, 'selling out', and Chicago's music scene
10:30 The touring economics of the 90's
13:15 Rigged charts and the beginning of Pop music
16:00 Representation of Rock music in the charts / award shows
19:30 Ross on the future of music in a digital world
20:30 Numbers mean nothing if no one gives a sh*t.
21:00 Pop vs Rock: The future of music
28:30 Women archetypes in music
38:21 Billy's advice: What you need to survive in the music industry
40:00 World building and songwriting advice
43:31 How to define your value as an artist in a commercial world
44:40 Billy's Batman story
49:00 Breaking 'Landmine' because of Courtney Love
51:50 How he meets Courtney Love
54:08 How he learned to play guitar
57:00 His guitar hero inspiration…
1:01:10 Meeting the band
1:03:20 Finding a world class drummer hiding in plain sight
1:07:05 Fighting for his band when no one believed in them
1:15:29 Keeping your mouth shut when it's not your session
1:16:02 Fight for your copyright. The band struggling with his sole writing credit
1:18:00 AI in music… and Billy's take on it
Credits:
Hosted by Ross Golan
Produced by Joe London & Jad Saad
Edited by Jad Saad
Post-Production VFX by Pratik Karki
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Everything you write has value. Don't let them tell you that it doesn't. You know, this is a bit of a hero's journey. We have no money. We're playing a style of music people don't even like. And I'm sitting somewhere trying to convince a band, we will one day be one of the biggest bands in the world, okay? This is like a game, do you understand? There's only so much time, somebody's going to win and somebody's going to lose. So you need |
| 0:21.4 | to have real chops as a writer, and you need to write in a way that cannot be imitated. Otherwise, |
| 0:27.4 | you will die. You're writing 100% songs and producing them. There were times where people didn't |
| 0:32.2 | like the way it was going down, which is that I was 100% writer. Was it hard for them to see the windfall of publishing? |
| 0:40.5 | Yes. |
| 0:41.3 | How did you deal with that? |
| 0:43.1 | Poorly. |
| 0:44.2 | We don't actually know what our value is going to be posthumously. |
| 0:48.2 | She's like, you think everything you touch is important, and I was like, yeah, because |
| 0:51.9 | everything I touch has value. |
| 0:53.5 | I just don't know how much value. |
| 0:55.3 | I refuse, patently refuse to use AI in my music creation. You're literally leaning into the thing |
| 1:02.1 | that will destroy you. How do you explain a path where you can make a living doing music? |
| 1:09.5 | Number one, I would say. |
| 1:17.2 | This season is presented by NMPA, the National Music Publishers Association. |
| 1:20.9 | Champions of songwriters and publishers everywhere. |
| 1:25.3 | Welcome to And The Writers. I am your host, Ross Golan. |
| 1:30.3 | Today's legend is to alternative and rock music what Chicago architects are to Skylines. And this frontman slash producers unique tone and hauntingly rich |
| 1:37.4 | compositions would be hung up in the Chicago Art Institute if they were hangable. I mean, maybe it's |
| 1:43.8 | because I grew up playing in bands in the |
| 1:46.4 | suburbs of Chicago, or maybe it's because Smashing Pumpkin's Riffs are how all of us, |
| 1:51.5 | in my generation, learn to play guitar. Or maybe it's because I'm a Cubs fan. But, you know, |
... |
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