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Length
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The choice to place a song like “Jellybelly” so early in the tracklist definitely makes a statement. The band seems to be communicating that, although “Tonight, Tonight” kicks it off, this is not a positive album full of hope. This is an unflinching journey into the human condition.
After all, “Jellybelly” is arguably the heaviest track on the album (the contender being “Tales of a Scorched Earth”). With multiple guitars swirling around an unpredictable drum sequence, it closely resembles something more akin to heavy metal than to what most consider alternative rock. It does reign in the chaos for a more melodic and ordered chorus however, giving it an accessibility not normally found in harder songs that stray into the metal genre
When pushed to pick a first single for the album, Corgan originally chose “Jellybelly.” As he explained to Alternative Nation, his initial first choice was based on his rebellious nature:
‘Bullet’ was the absolute obvious choice…which is kind of why I didn’t want it to be the first single. You know, in Pumpkinland, we don’t really like to do the obvious thing. I felt really close to ‘Jellybelly,’ because it sounds to me like a classic Pumpkins song from a third album.
"A nihilist manifesto thrown like a pink hand grenade into an alley, I just went rode shotgun with the images until it sketched out nicely the gray of my suburban years.
The original riff dates backwards into 1992, where we’d spasmodically play some concoction of this song if there was nothing else to jam on in a 3rd encore. To spice things up the machine gun bit was added to chop up the monotony on the back end of the blues. Once we flipped the script to bring the rat-tat-tat up front, this led to far more excitement. Sped up tremendously, a Teutonic maelstrom emerged, until there was a starship waiting without a single lyric or melody to accompany it into space."
- Billy Corgan via 2012 Reissue Liner Notes
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