3 Songs You Didn’t Know The Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan Wrote for Other Artists

A self-taught musician, Billy Corgan, born March 17, 1967, learned to play guitar in high school, then dismissed a slew of scholarship offers to pursue music instead, playing in a few bands in Chicago and Florida before forming The Smashing Pumpkins in 1988.

As the band’s chief songwriter, Corgan penned the Pumpkins’ biggest hits, from 1991 debut, Gish, through their more monumental breakthrough in ’93, Siamese Dream with “Cherub Rock,” ‘Today” and “Disarm,” through “Tonight, Tonight” and “Bullet with Butterfly Wings,” off Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and more.

Throughout the past three decades, Corgan has chronicled some of his most masterful lyrics with The Smashing Pumpkins and his solo releases, along with collaborations stretching from Ray Davies, Marilyn Manson, and Hole to Scorpions and The Cure‘s Robert Smith, among many others.

Corgan has also penned a few songs outside of the Pumpkins and his solo material. Here are three songs Corgan wrote for other artists since the early ’00s.

1. “Rain,” Breaking Benjamin (2004)
Written by Billy Corgan and Benjamin Burnley

Following The Smashing Pumpkins break up after the 2000 releases of Machina/The Machines of God and Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music, Corgan began working on other projects, including collaborations with Taproot and the late Sky Saxon (1937-2009) of the ’60s psychedelic garage rock band The Seeds.

Corgan also joined Breaking Benjamin while they were working on their second album, We Are Not Alone, and co-wrote three songs with singer Benjamin Burnley, including “Follow,” “Forget It,” and closing single “Rain.”

Take a photograph
It’ll be the last
Not a dollar or a crowd could ever keep me here
I don’t have a past
I just have a chance
Not a family or honest plea remains to say

Rain, rain go away
Come again another day
All the world is waiting for the sun

Is it you I want
Or just the notion of
A heart to wrap around so I can find my way around
Safe to say from here
You’re getting closer now
We are never sad ’cause we are not allowed to be

2. “Lost in the Woods,” Taproot (2005)
Written by Billy Corgan, Jarrod Montague, Mike DeWolf, Philip Lipscomb, and Stephen Richards

Known for their 2002 hit “Poem,” on their third album, Blue-Sky Research, alt-metal band Taproot pulled in Corgan for a few collaborations. Corgan ended up co-writing three tracks with the band on the album: “Violent Seas,” “Promise,” and “Lost in the Woods.”

Tonight I’m freakin’ out again
Tonight I’m thinkin’ so low
All I wanted was a friend all I’ve got is no one
Tonight I’ll sleep alone I won’t sleep at all
My heart isn’t alive

Right now I’m sinking further down
Right now I’m breaking inside
A long drive to see you lie in bed
A long ride wishing for your life
Tonight I’ll stay with you
And I will get us through

3. “Pacific Coast Highway,” Hole (2010)
Written by Billy Corgan and Courtney Love

Corgan had already worked with Hole in the late ’90s, co-writing five songs with ex-girlfriend Courtney Love for their third album, Celebrity Skin, including the title track—which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart—along with “Malibu,” “Hits So Hard,” “Dying” and “Petals.”

For the band’s fourth and final album, Nobody’s Daughter, Corgan also co-wrote “Pacific Coast Highway” with Love, along with “How Dirty Girls Get Clean” (with Love and Linda Perry).

All this world’s shame won’t stop my arrival
And all this world’s fame, drugs, plague won’t stop my survival

I’m bloody and totally bound
I don’t know what to do with my hands now
I surrender, I give in
I’ll kick down your door if you don’t let me in

And I’ve lost myself completely
I look to you, my shooting star
I’m on the Pacific Coast Highway
My God, how did you fall so hard?

Photo by Daniel Boczarski / Getty Images