Song of the Day 2/10: The Smashing Pumpkins, “Pennies”

The collapse of the Kansas City Chiefs might be the latest evidence that everything Trump touches turns to shit. His chosen gladiator, Pat Mahomes, landed flat on his ass six times, and you can tell Mein Furball was pissed off, because he quickly changed the subject by issuing one of his impetuous edicts. Immediately and henceforth, he decreed, we shall end the destructive practice of … minting pennies!

Though it’s not in the president’s power to act on it, the U.S. mint did lose $85.3 million producing the coins last year, so there’s a valid reason to curtail production. Still, in the federal budget, the savings are analogous to, uh, pennies.

Trump might also have an ulterior motivation. People have for years proposed eliminating the penny from commerce, making the nickel the smallest coin – and forcing every price to move in 5-cent increments. The all-but-certain coming Trumpflation will make that a practical move, but it’s going to render a bunch of songs like this one anachronisms.

The Smashing Pumpkins were at their creative and commercial peak in 1995, when their double CD (and triple vinyl LP) “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart and quickly went on beyond platinum to diamond status, meaning 10 million records sold. The band initially was seen as part of the grunge brigade, but by mid-decade it was clear that frontman and songwriter Billy Corgan drew on a much wider range of influence – heavy metal, pyschedelia and art rock in addition to alternative and grunge. His strong melodic sense made them more popular than many of their forerunners in the alternative scene, and his prickly personality did nothing to defuse the peers who called him a sell-out.

For “Mellon Collie,” Corgan wrote nearly five dozen songs – 30 that didn’t make the cut appeared on a future album –and unlike on their previous album, he didn’t play most of the instruments himself. “Pennies” didn’t make the album but was released with the album’s third single, “Zero,” which was really an EP containing nearly 40 minutes of music. Corgan later told Guitar World it was “one of those songs that I wrote in 10 minutes and can’t seem to shake off.”