Smashing Pumpkins‘ mainman Billy Corgan has criticised influential US website Pitchfork, stating his belief that its often elitist nature is harming, rather than helping, new bands break through.
“If you’re 20 years old and you aspire to be like me or Kurt Cobain or Courtney Love or Trent Reznor, you’re not going to make it that way, you won’t succeed,” Corgan has told The Daily Beast.
“Let’s say you’re the next Kurt Cobain. You will be appropriated on your first album by the Pitchfork community. Your record company will rally round that idea because that’s your marketing platform. But the minute you’re in that world you’re frozen.”
“Those Pitchfork people are very much about social codes, about whether you’re wearing the right t-shirt. That orthodoxy is no different than the rigidity of the football team at school. You can’t break the social order if you’re preaching to the choir – and the choir already has cool haircuts!”
The Smashing Pumpkins’ long-delayed ‘Oceania‘ album was finally released last month, peaking at #4 on the Billboard 200 in the States.