Billy Corgan: “Rock was silenced on purpose”

Billy Corgan reignites the debate on the role of rock in contemporary cultureto. During the latest episode of his podcast “The Magnificent Others”, the frontman of The Smashing Pumpkins argued that, starting from the late 90s, rock would be “deliberately silenced“in the mainstream imagination. According to Corgan, the turning point occurred between 1997 and 1998, when MTV would have progressively reduced the space dedicated to guitars to favor the rise of hip hop and pop. “I’ve seen everything change,” he explained, speaking of a sudden shift in programming and editorial standards. Defiantly, the musician added that “Some say even the Central Intelligence Agency was involved”, while specifying that these are theories that go beyond his expertise.

Corgan does not deny the artistic importance of hip hop nor the quality of the music that emerged in those years, but identifies a cultural fracture: rock, while remaining one of the strongest genres in terms of tickets sold and tours in the United States and Europe, would have lost centrality in public and media discourse. The paradox, according to him, is evident: while pop dominates charts and platforms, rock continues to fill arenas but without having the same cultural weight it had in the years of “Siamese Dream” or “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”. For Corgan, it is not a simple evolution of taste, but a precise industrial dynamic that would have limited the voice of rock stars in the cultural debate. Words intended to spark discussionespecially because they come from one of the protagonists of the golden age of alternative rock, author of records like “Adore” and “Machina/The Machines of God”, released right after that presumed paradigm shift.