Billy Corgan (lost unreleased Christmas album from Smashing Pumpkins lead singer; 2018)

Billy Corgan with a man dressed as Santa Claus.

Status: Lost

Billy Corgan is an American musician born on March 17th, 1967 who is best known for being the lead singer, guitarist, primary songwriter and sole consistent member of the American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins. However, during downtime between Smashing Pumpkins albums, Corgan has also busied himself with numerous other activities, including a career as a professional wrestling promoter, as well as recording a number of solo albums. This included a Christmas album Corgan worked on throughout 2018, but ended up not releasing.

Christmas Album

Corgan first announced his intentions to make a Christmas album in 2018, following the release of the Smashing Pumpkins' reunion album Shiny and Oh So Bright Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun. In a 2018 interview with USA Today , Corgan stated how he wanted to rerecord the Christmas songs previously recorded by the Pumpkins in a style that would "probably lean more acoustic", along with recording covers of more laid back Christmas songs such as "Jingle Bell Rock".

The Smashing Pumpkins were by no means strangers to Christmas music (having previously recorded a cover of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" for the compilation album No Toys for O.J. and contributing the song "Christmastime" to the album A Very Special Christmas 3), but the idea was still met with mockery and derision in some circles, with many believing that Corgan's Gothic vocals and the melancholic sound of the Pumpkins' music would be a poor fit for a Christmas album. Corgan would later respond to these critics in an Instagram Q&A, referring to them as "bearded soy men".

The album wouldn't be discussed again until 2020, with Corgan stating in an interview with American journalist Jenniffer Weigel that he had been working on the album throughout 2018. In the 2018 USA Today interview, Corgan had stated that he wanted the album to be an entire Smashing Pumpkins project, but he revealed in the interview with Jenniffer that he had largely worked on the album solo, stating that he had "written some songs", and how he "had found some cool obscure songs", and that he had also "picked a couple of classics that I liked". However, Corgan was not happy with the final results, stating that "We kind of did it quick, and I wasn't satisfied with the results, so I junked it all." As a result, the album went unreleased, and while Corgan did express some interest in someday revisiting the project, what work was done on the album has thus far remained unavailable for public consumption.

On December 18th, 2021, Billy Corgan performed a live concert at Madam Zuzu's (a vegan cake shop owned by him and his family) in Chicago in tribute to his late father William Corgan Sr., who had passed away earlier that same month. At this concert, three Christmas songs were performed; a cover of Harry Simeone's "Do You Hear What I Hear?", and two original songs entitled "Evergreen" and "The Magi and the Shiny Bright". It is currently unknown if these songs were among those recorded by Corgan for his Christmas album.

Gallery

"Do You Hear What I Hear?"

"Evergreen"

"The Magi and the Shiny Bright"