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The Smashing Pumpkins is an American alternative rock band that formed in Chicago in 1988. While The Smashing Pumpkins has gone through several lineup changes, The Smashing Pumpkins consisted of Billy Corgan (vocals/guitar), James Iha (guitar/vocals), D'arcy Wretzky (bass/vocals), and Jimmy Chamberlin (drums/percussion) for most of The Smashing Pumpkins 's recording career.

Disavowing the punk rock roots shared by many of their alt-rock contemporaries, The Smashing Pumpkins have a diverse, densely layered, and guitar-heavy sound, containing elements of gothic rock, heavy metal, dream pop, psychedelic rock, progressive rock, shoegazer-style production and, in later recordings, electronica. Frontman Billy Corgan is The Smashing Pumpkins 's primary songwriter—his grand musical ambitions and cathartic lyrics have shaped The Smashing Pumpkins 's albums and songs, which have been described as "anguished, bruised reports from Billy Corgan's nightmare-land."

The Smashing Pumpkins broke into the musical mainstream with their second album, 1993's Siamese Dream. The Smashing Pumpkins built their audience with extensive touring and their follow-up, 1995's double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, debuted at number one on the Billboard charts. With approximately 18.3 million albums sold in the United States alone as of 2006, The Smashing Pumpkins were one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands of the 1990s. However, internal fighting, drug use, and diminishing sales hampered The Smashing Pumpkins and led to a 2000 break-up. In April 2006, The Smashing Pumpkins officially announced that they were reuniting and recording a new album. Returning members Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin were joined by new additions Jeff Schroeder (guitar/vocals), Ginger Reyes (bass/vocals), and Lisa Harriton (keyboard/vocals) in 2007 to tour behind their new release, Zeitgeist.

The direction of The Smashing Pumpkins is dominated by chief guitarist, lead vocalist, and principal songwriter Billy Corgan. Journalist Greg Kot wrote, "The music [of The Smashing Pumpkins] would not be what it is without his ambition and vision, and his famously fractured relationships with his family, friends, and band members." Melissa Auf der Maur commented upon news of The Smashing Pumpkins 's reunion, "Everyone knows Billy doesn't need too many people to make a Pumpkins record, other than Jimmy [Chamberlin]—who (sic) he has on board." Many of Corgan's lyrics for the Pumpkins are cathartic expressions of emotion, full of personal musings and strong indictments of himself and those close to him. Music critics were not often fans of Corgan's angst-filled lyrics. Jim DeRogatis famously wrote in a 1993 Chicago Sun-Times article that Corgan's lyrics "too often sound like sophomoric poetry," although he viewed the lyrics of later Smashing Pumpkins albums Adore and Machina as an improvement.

The Smashing Pumpkins' distinctive sound up until Adore involved layering numerous guitar tracks onto a song during the recording process, a tactic that Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness coproducer Flood called the "Pumpkin guitar overdub army." There were a few overdubbed parts on Gish but Corgan began to really explore the possibilities of overdubbing with Siamese Dream; Corgan has stated that "Soma" alone contains up to 40 overdubbed guitar parts. While Corgan knew many of the songs would be difficult or impossible to replicate from their recorded versions in concert (in fact, some songs were drastically altered for live performance), he has explained the use of overdubbing by posing the question "When you are faced with making a permanent recorded representation of a song, why not endow it with the grandest possible vision?" This use of multilayered sounds was inspired by Corgan's love of 1970s arena rock bands Queen, Boston, and Electric Light Orchestra, as well as shoegaze, a British alternative rock style of the late 1980s and early 1990s that relied on swirling layers of guitar noise for effect. Mellon Collie coproducer Alan Moulder was originally hired to mix Siamese Dream because Corgan was a fan of his work producing shoegaze bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and Slowdive.

Like many contemporary alternative bands, The Smashing Pumpkins utilized shifts in song dynamics, going from quiet to loud and vice versa. Hüsker Dü's seminal album Zen Arcade demonstrated to the band how they could place gentler material against more aggressive fare, and Corgan made such shifts in dynamics central to the pursuit of his grand musical ambitions. Corgan said he liked the idea of creating his own alternative universe through sound that essentially tells the listener, "Welcome to Pumpkin Land, this is what it sounds like on Planet Pumpkin." This emphasis on atmosphere carried through to Adore (described as "arcane night music" in prerelease promotion) and the Machina albums (concept records that tell the story of a fictional rock band).

The Smashing Pumpkins drew inspiration from a variety of other genres, some unfashionable during the 1990s among music critics. Corgan in particular was open about his appreciation of heavy metal, citing Dimebag Darrell of Pantera as his favorite contemporary guitarist. When one interviewer commented to Corgan and Iha that "Smashing Pumpkins is one of the groups that relegitimized heavy metal" and that they "were among the first alternative rockers to mention people like Ozzy and Black Sabbath with anything other than contempt," Corgan went on to rave about Black Sabbath's Master of Reality and Judas Priest's Unleashed in the East. The song "Zero," which reminded Iha of Judas Priest, is an example of what the band dubbed "cybermetal." Post-punk and gothic rock bands like Joy Division/New Order, Bauhaus, The Cure, and Depeche Mode were formative influences on The Smashing Pumpkins, which covered such artists in concert and on record. Psychedelic rock was also referenced often in The Smashing Pumpkins 's early recordings; according to Corgan, "In typical Pumpkins fashion, no one at that point really liked loud guitars or psychedelic music so of course that's exactly what we had to do." Corgan acknowledged that a chord he jokingly claimed as "the Pumpkin chord" (a G# octave chord at the eleventh fret of a guitar with the low E string played over it), used as the basis for "Cherub Rock," "Drown," and other songs, was in fact previously used by Jimi Hendrix. Other early influences cited by Corgan include Cream, The Stooges, and Blue Cheer.

Regarding the band's influence upon other groups, Greg Kot wrote in 2001, "Whereas Nirvana spawned countless mini-Nirvanas, the Pumpkins remain an island unto themselves." Still, some artists and bands have mentioned the Pumpkins as an influence, such as Nelly Furtado and members of My Chemical Romance. My Chemical Romance vocalist Gerard Way has said that they pattern their career upon the Pumpkins', including music videos