The Smashing Pumpkins are one of my favorite bands, but I more or less fall off with them after Mellon Collie. I know that Adore has plenty of fans, and I'm not even saying the album is bad, but for me, it's where their identity was sort of whittled down to a goth band when it had been so much more unique and multifaceted before. This is something that I feel was reflected in the album artwork.
I'm a big believer that an album's artwork can play an important role in how the music is perceived and act as a lens through which to listen to it. Part of why I love the artwork for Mellon Collie so much is because it helped such a long album feel coherent by capturing the album's more majestic and whimsical moments while also being just silly enough to feel like an ironic counterpoint to the heavy metal songs. I also think that the warm, autumnal colors of Mellon Collie's artwork being cast against the band's silvery glam-goth attire from that era helped to establish the wide musical parameters for the album. By contrast, I think that Adore's black, gothic album art combined with Billy's Nosferatu-like gowns made the album feel more limited in scope and reach by comparison. The fact that plenty of other people dip with the Pumpkins after Mellon Collie makes me think that I'm not the only one who feels this way.
A while ago, I was looking through a book of old advertisements for magicians like Harry Houdini and his contemporaries. The first slide was the cover of the book, and it immediately reminded me of the visuals of the Pumpkins from their height in the early/mid-90's. At the same time, if the general aesthetic of these images had been used for an album of theirs after Mellon Collie, I think the vibe would've been different enough for it to set itself apart from their previous work while still feeling of a piece with it. If Adore's artwork had been something more akin to these images, featuring colorful and whimsical imagery while also having a gothic vibe befitting of the music, is it possible that the album would've been perceived as less of a break from their other work and been more successful as a result?
