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About

Genius Annotation

“Muzzle” is the twelfth song on the first disc, Dawn to Dusk, of The Smashing Pumpkins' third album, and first and only double album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

Lyricist and lead singer Billy Corgan has said that this song was written partially as a preemptive strike on critics who were going to listen to Mellon Collie and tell Billy to “shut up."

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

What did The Smashing Pumpkins say about "Muzzle"?
Genius Answer

Written at first on the piano in my crude Lennon-ish tinker toy style, this song possibly more than any other in the collection demonstrates the power of the old band collective to convert up ideas rapidly; from doleful sea shanties into epic rockets.

It took me nearly a month to convince Jimmy to play with such joyful abandon on his fills, and I cited the great Big Star as an example where playing loose didn’t necessarily mean playing poorly. This notion opened up a whole new gateway to Jimmy’s drumming, where emotional expressionism took priority over his vaunted technical precision. Some- where in my mind I was thinking of Bobby D in repeating the core themes with variation at the end, but it was a leftover memory of a clever song device from a source I could never recall. The idea of a muzzle refers to thinking my life would be far simpler if I just kept my trap shut.

-Billy Corgan, 2012 Reissue Liner Notes

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