Billy Corgan Just Broke Rock and Roll's Last Taboo: Talking About God

Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan used his own podcast, "The Magnificent Others," to say the quiet part out loud: "I'm a Christian as well," he told guest Michael Sweet of the Christian metal band Stryper. It is not exactly a plot twist for anyone who has followed Corgan's lyrics for the last two decades, but hearing a genre-defining alt-rock frontman say it plainly, to another musician known for wearing his faith on his sleeve, is a different thing than burying it in a bridge.

Corgan was blunt about why most of his peers do not do the same. "God is the third rail of rock and roll," he said. "If you talk about God, you might as well throw your career down the hole." He framed his own choice to talk about it anyway as a matter of basic consistency rather than a career risk he was excited to take: "I made the decision that I was gonna talk about God honestly...and if it was gonna hurt me, I didn't care." And then the line that doubles as a thesis statement for an entire career built on unfashionable sincerity: "If I can't be willing to be honest with who I am, well, what am I asking a fan to believe in?"

Rock and roll has spent decades treating faith like a marketing liability, something to obscure behind metaphor or leave for the Christian rock aisle. Corgan, who has been dropping references to God since Zwan's "Jesus, I" in 2003, is not converting on camera so much as finally saying the thing he has been implying since before some of his fans were born. Authenticity has always been the one brand attribute alt-rock claims to worship above all others. Corgan just tested whether the genre actually means it.

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →