Billy Corgan discussed why music can no longer change the world, and how it has transformed into an Illuminati party, in a recent Smashing Pumpkins Facebook Q&A video.
“I think I’m more positive with where I am, I accept defeat, and accept things I don’t like with a bit more grace. But I also believed much much more in my 20’s in the power of music to change the world, and I don’t necessarily share that same belief, which is sort of a strange tragedy really. You could make that akin to my own ego issue, which is I no longer believe that I am capable of changing the world, But I look around and I don’t see a lot of people changing the world with music anymore, I see a lot of people writing the soundtrack for the apocalypse, and some sort of weird Illuminati festival.
Here’s the positive part of it, I think human beings, in an act of self-preservation, gravitate to things that they think will make them feel better, or feel more hopeful, or want to fight the good fight. So if music doesn’t do that for a majority of people these days – I shy away from criticizing popular music because it ends up coming off like a screed against a particular generation, and I don’t mean it that way. I just don’t see the same musical relationship in the world.
I mean I grew up, by the time I figured out who the Beatles were they’d already broken up, but the fact that there was a Beatles, and those things did happen, and people still talked about them in a particular way, and still talk about them in a particular way, it’s hard to erase that memory and compare it to the Illuminati festival stuff.”
