Heart Sweats II: Another Swim Into The Sound Valentine’s Day Mixtape

Rip open that box of chocolates, pour out some red wine, and grab a handful of chalky heart-shaped candies, ‘cause we’ve got a lovey-dovey Valentine’s Day roundup for all you hopeless romantics out there. In celebration of the world’s most amorous holiday, we asked the Swim Team what love songs are hitting them particularly hard right now. Much like last year’s edition, the result is a beautiful and wide-ranging mixtape from the Swim Team directly to you. 

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Alien Boy – “Seventeen”

Get Better Records

Falling in love is stupid. It’s one of the most senseless things you can throw yourself into, but that’s how it has to be. Love is going to embarrass you, humble you, and terrify you; it's going to make you act crazy and hurt in ways you never thought possible… It’s also the best thing in the world. Before there can be love, there must be that weird liminal period where you’re not sure what’s going on within yourself or with this person. You’re not sure if this feeling is one-sided or just something you’re thinking too much about and building up in your head. Most people call this the “crush” stage, and it can be just as exhilarating as it is disastrous.

That feeling of a new relationship, of fresh, dumb, pure emotional adoration is captured perfectly in “Seventeen” by Alien Boy. It’s a song embodying the feeling of adolescent love, the type of love that takes over your body and abducts your mind. The bouncy guitar jangle acts as the heartbeat while the bass and drums add a propulsive, restless energy like a leg you can’t stop bouncing. Every waking moment, you’re consumed with this sense of possibility; all the imagined realities and possible futures. You need reckless abandon. You need to let it out, or you’re gonna implode. You’ve gotta love like you’ve never loved someone before. It’s all or nothing.

– Taylor Grimes

Brahm – “I will find you”

Self-Released

Screamo is not typically the place you look to for romantic love songs. Despondent longing, sure, plenty of examples there, but espousals of deep care and adulation not rooted in agony can be a bit hard to come by. Which is really a shame. A genre as complex and passionate as this owes itself to have at least a few tracks that explore love in its connective tenderness. This is why when Brahm released “I will find you,” I was very quickly moved to tears. Here, so much of what makes this music powerful was being channeled into a grand exultation of the relationship between the singer and his now-fiancée, concentrated into an incantational promise: “I will find you / In every lifetime / Just like we / Were always meant to.” Screamed, repeated, driven up into a crescendo: “I will find you” is one of the few screamo songs that feels truly pure in its love while claiming and owning all the sonic intensity one can expect from a legendary band like Brahm. Tender, subtle, gentle, then explosive. Though few in number, screamo love songs are immense and absolutely worth weeping over on our most saccharine of holidays.

– Elias Amini

The Meters – “Mardi Gras Mambo”

Warner Records

Every few years, like this year, Valentine’s Day coincides with the final round of Mardi Gras festivities. It always kind of irritated me when that happened. Mardi Gras is such an insular holiday with days upon days of nonstop partying and local antics, while Valentine’s Day’s appearance always felt like it was abruptly intruding—a pink and red reality check while I’m dealing with purple, green, and gold. I have softened on this position over time and have personally compromised by including Mardi Gras songs amongst my pantheon of the greatest love songs. When measuring how much love I feel towards my favorite Mardi Gras songs, I think I love The Meters’ cover of “Mardi Gras Mambo” the most. Quite frankly, the little funky keys part at the beginning is one of the most beautiful things put to wax and best enjoyed with a daiquiri in hand. It's an old song, somewhere around 70 years old, meaning that it’s been played for generations of New Orleanians like me. This means that everyone knows it, everyone sings it, and everyone does the same little dance to it while standing on the streets. Love is in everything, and love is everywhere, but love is especially in the Mardi Gras mambooooo down in New Orleans.

– Caro Alt

ManDancing – “I Really Like You (Carly Rae Jepsen cover)”

Something Merry

Sometimes people joke about Carly Rae Jepsen being the queen of emo, except I’m not joking. In 2015, she blessed the world with an instant-classic pop album, Emotion, absolutely overflowing with timeless desire, courageous sincerity, and selfless love. Three short years later, Something Merry and 15 talented artists orchestrated a cover album, with all proceeds donated to Immigration Equality.
EMO-TION redirects the original album’s skyscraper-high pop sensibilities into intimate articulations for any occasion. In their cover of “I Really Like You,” ManDancing takes the already perfectly unsure, desperate, brave lyrics and fills them with bated breath, yearning, and a passion literally begging to be met. The guest vocals from Em Noll in the chorus mirror lead singer Steve Kelly’s feelings, not knowing if falling so fast is a good idea, and not really caring. 

I met my partner at a rock concert, and after our second date, 72 hours later, I said to her, “I think we’re in trouble.” What began as innocently getting to know each other quickly spiraled into a long-distance relationship spanning the Atlantic Ocean. These days, our distance only spans Iowa, and even then, we’re lucky enough to see each other almost every month. This song reminds me of when we met, let go of everything, and fell for each other. 

ManDancing, king of this single; Carly Rae Jepsen, queen of emo music; Annie Watson, queen of my heart.

– Braden Allmond

Oso Oso – “skippy”

Self-released

This just in: love is just liking everything about a person?

I like how you’re a little messy when you’re in your comfortable spaces–like how you leave your socks by my bed, yet you’re so put-together everywhere else. I like how you know that I can be a bit of a fuck-up sometimes, but you see who I am on the inside and, even more so, who I’m trying to be on the outside. I like the songs you show me, even when I don’t like the genre. But I like them because you showed them to me. I like how every melody of every song I hear is a sunny-bright hook, like literally every line of music and lyrics in “skippy” by Oso Oso. With you in the world, every song is catchier, every bite tastes better.

Most of all, I like the way that it could only be you and that you knew it before I did. I might be late to our party, but I’m grateful and lucky to go with you on my arm.

– Joe Wasserman

Touché Amoré – “Come Heroine”

Epitaph Records

I’ve never been one for love songs. I often find them saccharine, bogged down by cliche emotion and sticky with reductive lyrics that I’m sure I’ve heard elsewhere. I’ve been in love with my husband for nearly a decade, and it’s nearly impossible to find a song that accurately captures the enduring and torrential force of that kind of love, yet Touché Amoré manages to do just that in “Come Heroine.” The song crashes forward like an avalanche, rushing headlong into a crashing ocean of honest declaration: “You brought me in / You took to me / And reversed the atrophy / Did so unknowingly / Now I’m undone.” I’ve repeated this raw confession countless times, the rhythm of my heart counting the syllables. Love has disarmed me, shown me my weaknesses, and simultaneously strengthened me. “When I swore I’d seen everything / I saw you.” And even after a decade, seeing my husband every morning feels like the first time I realized I was in love with him. Even when the day comes that I finally have seen everything, I know it will still pale in comparison to him. Maybe I am one for love songs after all. 

– Britta Joseph

The Smashing Pumpkins – “Stand Inside Your Love”

Virgin Records

What does it actually mean to actually stand inside someone’s love? The hell if I know, but what I do know is that in the Y2K era Billy Corgan still had his fastball when it came to writing pop songs. “Stand Inside Your Love” is a shining example of this. It’s catchy as all get out, the lyrics are simple and easy to remember, I mean, I don’t know what else to tell you, it’s just a groovy listening experience. Those classic Pumpkins' new wave guitar textures still hit like an anvil to the heart to this day. It’s one of those love songs that still has some oomph when listening. Do yourself a favor and play this for your partner for Valentine’s or cruising around town on date night. You can thank me later. If they love the song, tell them that David sent you. If not, lose my number.

For extra credit, if you’re into the vaudeville subgenre, this song’s music video will scratch every itch you could ever imagine. 

– David Williams

Kings of Leon – “Find Me”

RCA

My partner and I have been together for almost a decade, which means there are a lot of songs to choose from that have been cornerstones to our relationship. I’d been finding it difficult to choose the best one to write about this year, and I suppose it took the pressing deadline of this article’s publish date to bless me with the source. Kings of Leon have unabashedly been one of my favorite bands since I was in grade school, despite their more recent material falling a bit flat for me. But it’s actually a song from their 2016 album WALLS that comes up quite a lot in our musical lexicon with one another, a song that finds the Followill family doing their best Interpol impression, of all bands. “Find Me” is without a doubt the best piece of music the band has released in the last ten years, an upbeat rocker that doesn’t mute Caleb’s signature voice like their other latest singles do. The chorus, which is largely anchored by the question “How did you find me?”, is an effervescent feeling we share and echoes the gratitude we carry that we found each other at all. In the second verse, Caleb pleads, “Take me away, follow me into the wild with a twisted smile, I can’t escape. And now I got you by my side, all my life, day after day.”

The WALLS Tour was one of the first concerts we ever went to together, and the jolt we got when they played “Find Me” kept us going throughout the rest of the 2+ hour set. I am gushingly lucky to have found my one, even if the “how” of it all doesn’t have a definitive answer. Although, it may be hard sometimes to find each other at Costco.

– Logan Archer Mounts

Angel Olsen – “Spring”

Jagjaguwar

“Don’t take it for granted, love when you have it,” is a line that has felt like a mantra ever since my first listen to this track on Angel Olsen’s 2019 album, All Mirrors. Sometimes the songs most indicative of love are the ones that describe the spaces in between it, the moments longing for it, and the times when it’s found, even if its presence only exists in a brief moment. “Spring” is downtempo enough to soundtrack a slow dance, but as the keys and orchestral production swell, it’s easy to get lost inside of due to its musical syntax and structure. It’s the auditory equivalent to the head rush of a kiss; it overtakes you but brings you back down from it gently. Even as Olsen reflects on others who may have found “it,” her optimism reaches the song’s ultimate peak of vulnerability as she plainly asks for it: “So give me some heaven just for a while, make me eternal here in your smile.”

– Helen Howard

MUNA – “Kind Of Girl”

Saddest Factory Records

Valentine’s Day can be hard when you’re single. I spent most of my twenties in a committed relationship, and now I can’t remember the last Valentine’s Day I celebrated that lined up with me being in a romantic relationship. However, even if you’re not romantically entangled on February 14th this year or any year, what’s most important is your perspective. I’ve been in and out of relationships quite a bit since my last major relationship broke off, and when any of those relationships have fizzled out, I found myself clinging to negative self-talk as I often do. “Kind Of Girl,” off of MUNA’s self-titled record, is a song I cling to when I need a reminder that it’s more important than anything to treat myself with grace and accept my flaws as human. Despite their catalog being full of sad queer girl music, this track takes a softer approach to sitting with your emotions. I’m the kind of girl who feels her emotions so intensely, both when falling in and out of love, or even in the presence of the slightest crush. A connection can simply run its course, yet I have to tell myself all the ways I should’ve done things differently and that I’m better off avoiding further entanglements. I’m glad I have MUNA to remind me in those moments that I need to love myself harder. I need to be gentle with the kind of girl I am, maybe lean into one of my many hobbies, and keep my heart open to the next person who wants to connect with me – and this time, let them. 

– Ciara Rhiannon

Smashing Pumpkins Misunderstood Madness of Machina: 25 Years Later

Photo by David Williams

In the spring of 1999, Billy Corgan plotted a scheme to snatch back the title of rock n’ roll king. This was coming just a year after a turbulent reception to his band’s fourth studio record, the unjustly maligned Adore. The public, it seemed, was not ready for The Smashing Pumpkins to turn their signature stadium-level rock into an intimate, ballad-heavy experience with an abundance of synths. The album failed to reach the sky-high peak of Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, which was an impossible feat to achieve (that record sold so much it went diamond), especially given the electronic-goth pivot they executed on Adore. The Pumpkins became victims of their own success; the number one band of the mid-’90s was hit with devastating adversity heading into the new millennium.

Around this era, music shifted away from the grunge movement that defined the early part of the decade. In many ways, this was rock music’s last gasp at the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist. Bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana were replaced by boy bands, hip-hop, and a fresh wave of aggro rock music dubbed nu-metal. TRL was my barometer for culture at this time: every day when I got home from school, I’d tune in at 4 PM Central Time to watch Carson Daly introduce videos from Britney Spears, NSYNC, Jay-Z, and Limp Bizkit. The bands of the early ‘90s were essentially pushed aside like Brussels sprouts at the kids’ table during Thanksgiving.

Rock music was in an undeniable state of transition during this period, with nu-metal leading the charge as a louder, angrier, and more aggressive offering. Groups like Limp Bizkit, Deftones, Kid Rock, Korn, and Rob Zombie were the bands that people wanted to listen to as the Y2K era approached. For a super-specific example, consider the entrance music of WWE legend The Undertaker. When he had his biker gimmick, The Undertaker introduced this era by coming out to Kid Rock’s “American Bad Ass,” but by the time the new millennium rolled around, he shifted to Limp Bizkit’s “Rollin’ (Air Raid Vehicle).” And don’t even get me started on the Mission: Impossible 2 soundtrack; if someone wanted to know what this era sounded like, just go listen to that album. It didn’t matter what the content was culturally; if a studio wanted commercially friendly rock songs attached to their product, they were going to be knocking on a nu-metal band’s doors. 

So, going back to the Pumpkins, Billy Corgan wanted to compete as if he were a top-tier athlete, testing his powers against the young guns while also aiming to make one last great record as a “fuck you” to the music industry as a whole. Feeling scorned by executives, critics, and even his own fanbase who rejected the previous record, Corgan began to conceive of a new album – a collection of songs so great that it would prove them all wrong. 

The Smashing Pumpkins, Circa 2000

But first, to even begin working toward this goal restoring the order of rock supremacy, Corgan needed drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, his hired muscle, back into the mix. Chamberlin is the merciless force that takes no prisoners behind the sticks. Songs like “Jellybelly,” “Geek U.S.A.,” and “An Ode to No One” showcase just what kind of Tasmanian Devil he truly became. Chamberlin combined his jazz background with a late-70s rock style that, I can attest after seeing his live performance, is truly a one-of-a-kind experience. Unfortunately, Chamberlin was exiled from the Pumpkins in 1996 for rampant drug use, so once he showed the ability to lead a clean lifestyle in the three years that followed, he was reinstated. Corgan said it best in an infamous Q Magazine interview that dubbed him THE RUDEST MAN IN ROCK: “If you want to know what Jimmy brings back to the band, then listen to Adore and this record back to back. It speaks for itself.”

Once Chamberlin returned, Smashing Pumpkins had all four original members back and ready to rock. James Iha, who is the Robin to Corgan’s Batman, has a reserved persona, always seemingly lurking in the shadows away from the attention of the spotlight. Iha excelled at bringing a more atmospheric ambiance to Corgan’s devastating power riffs. Meanwhile, bass player D’Arcy Wretzky has the kind of cool factor that you can only be born with. Known for her signature bleach blonde hair and nonchalant attitude, she brought an edge to the Pumpkins that no one can put an exact measure to. Wretzky was also the tastemaker of the band, where songs would often be run by her to see if they would work on records.

Photo by David Williams

Once reassembled, the band was off to the races, breaking ground on a concept album titled Machina / The Machines of God. The thought was for all the band members to play exaggerated caricatures of themselves, becoming the cartoon-like characters the public and critics viewed them as. The story of the record would revolve around a rock superstar named Zero (based on Corgan) who heard the voice of God, then renamed himself Glass and further renamed his band The Machines of God. The fans of the band are also known as the “Ghost Children.” Are you still with me? Good! Whether you think this plot is insanely convoluted or insanely brilliant, you have to admire the ambition of artists swinging for the fences with max power regardless of the outcome.

The Smashing Pumpkins, around this time, were the poster child for dysfunction. Right when the band reunited, everyone appeared to be in a harmonious kumbaya state, and the ship had finally been righted. I know their fans had to be thinking, “Ok, here we go! We’re about to get another Pumpkins classic!” Instead, something else was arriving in the shape of a neutron bomb flying in seemingly out of nowhere. Wretzky leaves the band before the recording is finished, never to return again, seemingly crushing the concept before it ever even began. When Corgan spoke to Q, he said, “I’m not going to talk about D’Arcy; she left for reasons more complicated than any single answer could hope to cover. So, I’m not going to get into that. It’s a private matter.”

In the music business, especially for a major label like Virgin, the show must go on; an album still needs to be recorded. What came out of those recordings is some of The Smashing Pumpkins’ most intriguing work to date. Opening track “The Everlasting Gaze,” which also served as the lead single from Machina, is one of my favorite songs in their entire catalog. The main attraction is the infectious cyber-metal guitar riffs that find a delicate tightrope balance of power and catchiness. Corgan repeats the opening lyrics “You know I’m not dead” nonstop as if he’s Freddy Krueger in a slasher film. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t kill the man. On top of that, when you throw in the addicting, can’t-take-my-eyes-off-it music video by Grammy award-winning director Jonas Åkerlund, the song is a can’t-miss experience. Go ahead and take a peek for yourself. This had all the ingredients for a timeless video; it’s goth, metal, theatrical, and has a leprechaun-green carpet, what more can you ask for?

Another classic that derived from this era of the Pumpkins was “Stand Inside Your Love.” This is another insane, visually entertaining music video, shot entirely in black and white and inspired by an Oscar Wilde play from 1891. The song has a new wave vibe similar to that of another Pumpkins mega-classic, “1979.” Does anyone know what “standing inside someone’s love means?” It doesn’t matter because the song is superb and is a pop hit.

One thing I appreciate about Machina, regardless of whatever dysfunction or controversy surrounded the band, was how they went for it. The Pumpkins easily could have folded and called it a day after a member left the band, but there are some seriously underrated pop songs here when you peel back the layers. “I Of The Mourning,” which, in my estimation, should have been the third single, accompanied by a music video, was essentially made for radio airwaves with that earwormy chorus. “This Time” is Corgan’s love song to the band, singing in only the way he can, “And yet it haunts me so / What we are letting go / Our spell is broken,” the words his heartfelt ode to a band that was actively being ripped to shreds. “With Every Light” is the gentlest song on Machina, and I believe that if it came out today, it would have a cult following, given how much new music coming out seems to borrow from the same spirit of this track.

Machina was caught between a rock and a hard place, regardless of the quality of the music. The public moved on from the alternative sound in the year 2000, and the convoluted concept didn’t help either. I don’t think the idea of the album was conveyed clearly enough for people to wrap their minds around while listening. Eight years after the release, Corgan reflected on the record’s failures, stating, “I think the combination of the band breaking up during that record, D’arcy leaving the band… Korn was huge at the time, Limp Bizkit was huge at the time, so the album wasn’t heavy enough. It wasn’t alternative enough; it was sort of caught between the cracks. And it was a concept record, which nobody understood. So the combination of those elements was a career-killer… Adore didn’t alienate the audience; they were just sort of like, ‘Oh, it’s not the record I want.’ Machina alienated people.”

In addition to all this, I can’t stress enough just how much Corgan had worn out his welcome with the press. From the band’s own in-fighting to the combative nature of his interviews, he didn’t do himself any favors. Goodwill was as good as eroded leading up to Machina, as Corgan would often give interviews with a played-up, standoffish persona to unsuspecting journalists. I’m a humongous wrestling fan, so I can appreciate Corgan relishing in the art of going kayfabe (presenting a staged performance as genuine or authentic), but you can’t treat an interview with Rolling Stone as if you’re cutting a promo on Stone Cold Steve Austin. That’s a recipe for a disaster, which is exactly what happened with the media on this album cycle.

Machina presents some of the most jarring “what ifs” in this era of music. What if D’Arcy never left the group? What if the story were clearer and more concise? What if Corgan got his wish and this were a double LP like Mellon Collie? Virgin Records denied Corgan this extravagance, citing the poor record sales of Adore. There was so much carryover material from Machina that there was no place to put it, so the band deployed a guerrilla marketing campaign for what would become known as Machina II. Only twenty-five vinyl copies were made and distributed to friends, with the sole mission of passing them along to the internet. That’s some forward-thinking views on online piracy for the twenty-first century to say the least.

What would become of Machina II was an artistic blend of synth-goth, dream-pop, and industrial heavy metal. This was a proper swan song for the initial run of the Pumpkins. If they had been granted the double-album treatment, I think this collection would have solidified them with one last classic to their name before bowing out in the year 2000.

Epilogue

The Machina era of The Smashing Pumpkins has reached its 25th Anniversary, and to celebrate this achievement, Billy Corgan has released a deluxe vinyl box set that collects the full story in one place. No longer do fans have to painstakingly agonize over what order the original song concepts would have been. The vinyl dubbed Machina — Aranea Alba Edition is forty-eight songs in length, complete with thirty-two bonus tracks of demos, outtakes, and live performances for the low-low price of three hundred and ninety-five dollars. If, like most folks, you find that this price is too rich for your blood, I’m sure this will hit streaming services soon enough. The year 2000 was a complicated, befuddling, and downtrodden end for the original Pumpkins lineup, but I’m happy to see that, slowly, more people are recognizing the artistic beauty of Machina, even twenty-five years later. Better late than never.

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David is a content mercenary based in Chicago. He’s also a freelance writer specializing in music, movies, and culture. His hidden talents are his mid-range jump shot and the ability to always be able to tell when someone is uncomfortable at a party. You can find him scrolling away on Instagram @davidmwill89, Twitter @Cobretti24, or Medium @davidmwms.