At Home With Billy Corgan: The Playlist

“I think these times call for a different level of understanding,” Billy Corgan says about creating art during a global pandemic. “A lot of people are having a hard time for a host of reasons, all of which are important. And so it's me trying to drop in the middle of that, parachute in with music and say, ‘Okay, well, this is the closest approximation I have to what I'm dealing with, and I hope that connects with you on the other side of this wire.’” In his candid conversation with Zane Lowe, the Smashing Pumpkins frontman opens up about his complicated relationship with playing guitar, bucking the trend with his music throughout his career, and returning to synthesizers on the band’s upcoming double album, CYR. Corgan also curated an exclusive Apple Music playlist of classic songs that soundtracked pivotal moments of his life and career featuring the likes of Humble Pie, Donovan, Bee Gees, and duo Bill Emerson & Cliff Waldron, whose music helped him reconnect with his bluegrass roots. “For me, personally, bluegrass has been a sort of late-in-life discovery, because I ultimately figured out it was the music of my ancestry,” he says. “I've sort of reclaimed this music for myself as a way of understanding that these songs are very much about my family. My grandfather was a coal miner and had black lung. I mean, you can't get any more American mythic than stuff like that. He was a bootlegger.”