Track Listing

1. Siva
2. Rhinoceros
3. Drown
4. Cherub Rock
5. Today
6. Disarm
7. Bullet With Butterfly Wings
8. 1979
9. Zero
10. Tonight, Tonight
11. Eye
12. Ava Adore
13. Perfect
14. The Everlasting Gaze
15. Stand Inside Your Love
16. Try, Try, Try (Album Version)
17. Real Love
18. Untitled

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5467 in Music
• Released on: 2001-11-19
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Smashing Pumpkins' greatest-hits album, Rotten Apples traces the band's evolution (or devolution, depending on your feelings about the band's radical sonic shift in the mid-1990s) from its early days to its status among the kings of alt rock. For fans of the Pumpkins' beginnings as a tripped-out indie/art-rock act, Apples opens with some of the band's strongest material. "Shiva" and "Rhinoceros" (from Gish, the Pumpkin's first album) seamlessly mixed dream pop with noisy Goth-rock as prime examples of the Pumpkins' early 1990s sound. Apples also showcases three stellar tracks ("Cherub Rock", "Today" and "Disarm") from Siamese Dream, the Pumpkins' breakthrough album. This disc makes the band's mid-90s' directional swing obvious, though, starting with "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" the aggressive alt rock/alt metal concoction released on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Fans of songs such as "Zero", "Tonight, Tonight" and "The Everlasting Gaze" will be happy to know that pretty much every cage rattling hit made it to this disc, along with the previously unreleased dream-pop track "Real Love" and an untitled new track (that sounds a lot like the Siamese Dream-era Pumpkins) to round out the mix. --Jennifer Maerz

CD Description
'Rotten Apples' is a greatest hits package encompasing the music of the Smashing Pumpkins before their inaugural split in 2000. Features songs from all five of their studio albums. Includes the internet only track 'Real Love' and a previously unreleased song 'Untitled'.

Customer Reviews

Utterly smashing
The Smashing Pumpkins were one of the greatest bands of the 90s, a mixture of dreamy pop and stark grungey metal, set against Billy Corgan's poem-like songwriting. And "The Smashing Pumpkins - Greatest Hits" almost lives up to its name -- there are one or two songs that don't quite fit here, but most of them are indeed the "Greatest" that the band produced.

The songs are pretty much arranged in chronological order, starting off with the hard-rocker "Siva" and heading off into the mixture of hard rock/metal, and eerie dreampop, climaxing with the rich offerings from "Mellon Collie And the Infinite Sadness." With the songs of "Adore," there's an obvious shift in tone, becoming a bit more gothic and less rockish, only to swing back in the slow-burning songs from "Machina," their swan song.

Long after disbanding, the Smashing Pumpkins are still a towering presence in rock -- they debuted in the era of Nirvana, but with a very different kind of music. Their creative use of basic instruments and Billy Corgan's rich songwriting made them much more complex and deeper than almost all rock bands of the time. And "Greatest Hits" follows them through the band's entire lifetime -- from their surprisingly polished debut to the panoramic "Mellon Collie" to their gothic art-rock.

The songs included on "Greatest Hits" are not just the most commercially known, but also several of the best -- "Ava Adore," "Siva," "1979" and "Tonight Tonight." An additional track is stuck on, "Real Love," but somehow it just isn't up to the standards of the other songs. It's nice, but not up to the level of the "Greatest" Smashing Pumpkins songs.

Corgan was without a doubt the creative center of the Pumpkins -- he wrote the songs, filling them with doubts, anger and anguish, and also provided some mind-blowing guitar riffs and his vocals. His high, reedy voice is woven well into the music, giving his poetic lyrics an unusually heartfelt quality. He's singing about love, death, bombs, loneliness in a metaphorical wasteland.

The guitar and bass provide sizzling soundscapes and dense walls of sound, while the percussion is complex and lightning-fast. At the same time, we get the sweeping dreampop (like the haunting "Rhinoceros") and gentler songs, where Corgan slows his guitar down to a gentle acoustic strum.

Rock doesn't get much more original than the Smashing Pumpkins, and several of their greatest hits -- both among fans and critics -- are compiled in "The Smashing Pumpkins - Greatest Hits." A good place for beginners, but also a good collection for fans.

The best collection of Smashing Pumpkins songs possible
This can only be summed up in one way: genius! Everyone, whether a Pumpkins fan or not, knows of their intense songs and original stylings, and this greatest hits compilation shows of all of their best pieces. Rotten Apples, the first cd, would have been fine on its own. It has all of their best songs, including classics like Bullet With Butterfly Wings and Today, along with the smashing (no pun intended) final single, Untitled. So, alone Rotten Apples is truely stunning. But then you get to the second disc: Judas O. This is a collection of the best B-Sides that they have ever made and is a perfect addition to an already perfect greatest hits album!!! Buy Buy Buy!!!!

A good compilation but an outstanding band
With such an unusual band as The Smashing Pumpkins, a greatest hits compilation never sounded such a brilliant idea to me. The main problem with this greatest hits record is that it obviously focuses on singles and, as most true fans will tell you and as some other reviewers have pointed out, the Pumpkins' best moments were usually not the blockbusting singles but hidden away in the middle of albums. I say "usually" because that's really not the case with their first two albums and therefore I can't really complain with "Siva," "Rhinocerus," "Today," "Cherub Rock" or "Disarm." The lovely "Drown" is an unexpected treat aswell but I am a bit crushed that "I am one" and the brilliant "Rocket" (Which WERE both singles by the way) have been left out.
"Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" was probably the highpoint of the Pumpkins' career and if I were compiling this album it would probably be at least a third of "Mellon Collie." In spite of the albums colossal size (over two hours and 28 tracks) you'd be hard pushed to find anything that I would call filler. "Tonight, tonight," "1979" and especially "Zero" are absolute gems but the albums hidden treasures: "Galapogos," "Porcelina of the vast ocean," "Where boys fear to tread," "X.Y.U" and loads of others really should be on this disc aswell.
The album "Adore" had some lovely stuff on it but was a slightly hit-and-miss affair with some great melodies getting lost under waves of electronica. It sometimes works but on "Ava Adore" it kinda flops. "Perfect" and "Eye" are much better but two of the best "Adore" tracks: "To Sheila" and "Behold the nightmare" have been left out (Particularly annoying because at this stage the compilers really should have realised that the Pumpkins were a commercial failure from "Adore" onwards so they should have stopped looking for non-existant "greatest hits" and picked the best songs instead.)
Everyone I know pretty much hates "Machina" but for me it was another high-point. "Stand inside your love" is one of the best tracks on this album and again, it's a shame there wasn't room for "Heavy Metal Machine," "This time" and "Wound."
By far the biggest crime is committed towards the end of the album. "Machina 2" was a fitting swan song for the Pumpkins and it's pretty criminal that only one track (and not the best track either) makes it onto the disc while bruising heavy metal such as "Dross" and "Cash car star" get the cold shoulder.
One of my fellow reviewers got it exactly right in that this should have been a double disc compilation because as it is, this is an album which tries to cram everything the Pumpkins were about onto one disc; a task almost impossible to pull off. If you have anything more than a casual interest in the Smashing Pumpkins then for heaven's sake save up and get the proper albums. You'll not regret it.

bob
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P.S yes the bonus disc sucks too