(Credits: Far Out / Billy Corgan)
Sun 1 March 2026 1:00, UK
If there’s one thing you can’t criticise Billy Corgan for, it’s the fact that he has always said things simply as they are.
To his mind, it doesn’t matter much if those things happen to ruffle feathers or turn a few heads. When he said recently that The Smashing Pumpkins were essentially the first grunge band to “grow up” and expand their sonic horizons, he didn’t necessarily mean it with any sense of venom on his tongue. He was only speaking his truth.
That perhaps unfairly leans towards painting Corgan in an overly pessimistic light, suggesting that he has a wrath or a fury towards the business and doesn’t care who might be harmed along the way. You only have to listen to Corgan speak for less than a few minutes to realise that this is far from the truth.
He has always been one to wax lyrical on the plaudits and praises of his favourite artists, with the likes of The Beatles and Black Sabbath being prime among them. But in many ways, those were the big fry: the group that Corgan attributed as “one of the great American bands” had a far more understated allure, subsequently making them so much more intriguing.
“One of the great underrated bands of all time,” were the words Corgan used to describe The Cars during an interview with Track Star. “Ric Ocasek blew my mind,” he enthused, before hastening to add: “I worked with Ric in the late ‘90s. I produced one of his solo records.”
Yet Corgan also freely admitted that it was only during this process that he truly took a “deep dive” into the back catalogue of The Cars, and realised that Ocasek was the master brains behind so much of the band’s output. He recalled: “My opening line to Ric, from a music point of view, was, ‘You motherfucker, you wrote all those songs?’ He was like, ‘Yeah.’ It was so perfect.’”
In this sense, with the metaphorical shrug of the shoulders, you can easily see how the suave confidence of someone like Ocasek rubbed off on Corgan. It clearly made a lasting impression. “I just think The Cars is just one of the great American bands,” the Smashing Pumpkins frontman mused. “I mean, what he was influenced by – everything from Suicide to Andy Warhol to Vargas, this kind of ’80s deco version of the world – he was amazing. A one-take singer in the studio. What a talented guy.”
That charmingly underrated quality possessed by The Cars was something that put them in a precisely unique position, both at the cusp of a whole new musical era between the end of punk and the start of the new wave, thus allowing them to bridge sonic boundaries unlike anyone else. But while success was granted in doses, the reality was that they only ever had four top ten hits.
It goes without saying that this was not a failure by any means, but the fact remained that The Cars were never the showiest of all models on the scene at the time. There is something inherently likeable about that sense of humility, though – and it’s a quality that Corgan sees as having embodied the all-American spirit of rock through and through.