Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is the third studio album by American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins, released on October 23, 1995 in the United Kingdom and a day later in the United States on Virgin Records. Produced by frontman Billy Corgan with Flood and Alan Moulder, the 28-track album was released as a two-disc CD and triple LP. The album features a wide array of styles, as well as greater musical input from bassist D'arcy Wretzky and second guitarist James Iha. Propelled by the album's lead single, "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", it debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 with first week sales of 246,500 units. To date it remains the band's only album to top the Billboard 200. It spawned five more singles—"1979", "Zero", "Tonight, Tonight", the promotional "Muzzle", and "Thirty-Three"—over the course of 1996, and was certified diamond by the RIAA, equivalent to more than 10 million units sold. Praised by critics for its ambition and scope, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness earned the band seven Grammy Award nominations in 1997, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year ("1979"), as well as nine MTV Music Video Awards nominations, eight of which were for "Tonight, Tonight", including "Video of the Year". Not only did they all become hits on both mainstream rock and modern rock stations, but "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", "1979", "Tonight, Tonight", and "Thirty-Three" also became the band's first Top 40 hits, crossing over to pop radio stations. The recording sessions saw a wealth of productivity: dozens of fully completed songs were cut from the album, and would turn up on later releases. A box set released in November 1996, titled The Aeroplane Flies High, compiled the promotional singles from the album, and featured approximately 30 fully completed songs from the Mellon Collie sessions which had not made the final cut for the album (including one track, "Pastichio Medley", which contained more than 70 short snippets of songs in various states of completion). Both Mellon Collie and The Aeroplane Flies High later saw reissues which included even more tracks from the sessions.