Home · Songs · The Smashing Pumpkins · Purr Snickety (As Purr Shnickety)
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From album
Siamese Dream
The Smashing Pumpkins · 1993 · Track 9
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The story behind
This song isn't just any track: it's a two-and-a-half-minute flash that feels like it came straight out of a fever dream. Purr Snickety (As Purr Shnickety) has no epic choruses or lyrics that tell linear stories, but it sounds as if Billy Corgan had taken a handful of distorted guitars, wrapped them in layers of echo, and hurled them into the void with the same urgency as scribbling in a private diary at three in the morning. The main riff doesn't repeat the same way twice: it twists, fractures, and re-emerges with a cadence that hovers between the hypnotic and the chaotic, as if the song were breathing in real time.
The track was recorded amid a storm of chaotic sessions, when the studio became a boxing ring where Corgan, The Smashing Pumpkins, and producer Butch Vig waged hour-long battles against an album they wanted to be perfect. The result was a record that sold over six million copies and took them from playing in Chicago basements to rubbing shoulders with the top of the Billboard charts. Purr Snickety is proof that, sometimes, chaos ends up being the best ally: a song that doesn’t ask to be understood, but to be felt.