The Smashing Pumpkins‘ Billy Corgan recently showed support towards multi-time Grammy Award winner Taylor Swift, who has been bashed for the length of her latest album ‘The Tortured Poets Department.’
Recently, Swift has received backlash from both critics and fans for her recently-released 31-track double album “The Tortured Poets Department,” as many complain the album is too long. As no stranger to releasing hefty albums himself, Corgan is demanding more respect for Swift as “one of the most gifted pop artists of all time”.
Well, it seems that Corgan, can’t comprehend the reason the music fans would turn their nose up at having more music from their favourite artists, and believes they should be grateful for receiving more tracks.
Billy Corgan defends Taylor Swift
Speaking to the Irish Times, Corgan talked about people complaining about artists releasing long albums – something he’s bewildered by. This is something he’s faced himself, with the Smashing Pumpkins’ latest album ‘ATUM’, which was released in three parts with a total of 33 songs.
Corgan said, sympathizing with Taylor and mentioning Sinéad O’Connor: “Now that Sinéad’s gone, would it be a bad thing if somebody turned up tomorrow and said, ‘Hey, I just found this tape, and there’s enough for 20 – or 30 or 50 – Sinéad songs.’ Would that be a bad thing?”
He then addressed the criticism faced by Taylor Swift: “Taylor Swift is one of the most gifted pop artists of all time. How is it a bad thing that she’s releasing more music? I can’t follow that… You can go on Spotify and just skip it.”
Smashing Pumpkins never shied away from dropping extended albums. Their famous 1995 record, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is a double LP with a swollen 28-song track list. Their recent rock opera project, Atum also featured 33 songs across the three parts. Meanwhile, on some of their shorter albums, the length of the record itself has regularly been over an hour.
While ‘Atum’ consisted 33 songs and 43 if 10 additional exclusive songs are counted that were made available on the record’s limited edition boxset – across three entries, Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ comprises 31 songs released in a single offering.
She initially had the first 16 tracks when the album dropped before revealing just hours later that it was a double album and released an additional 15 songs. The album is now technically available on digital as a single release with all 31 songs.