Bullet with Butterfly Wings

"Bullet with Butterfly Wings" is a song by American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins. It was the lead single from the band's 1995 double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The song won the 1997 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. This song was the band's first Top 40 U.S. hit, peaking at number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also spent six weeks at number 2 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, and peaked at number 4 on the Mainstream Rock chart. The song was named the 91st best hard rock song of all time by VH1 in 2009. The song was ranked number 70 on the 2008 list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time" of Rolling Stone. The song came second in the Triple J Hottest 100, 1995, later was voted #51 in the Triple J Hottest 100 of All Time, 2009 and #25 in the Triple J Hottest 100 of the Past 20 Years, 2013.

Background

The song had its origins during the recording of 1993's Siamese Dream. According to frontman Billy Corgan, "somewhere, I have a tape of us from 1993 endlessly playing the 'world is a vampire' part over and over". It was not until 1995 that Corgan finished the song with the noted chorus "rat in a cage", on an acoustic guitar during the same session that "Landslide" was recorded. The lyrics "Can you fake it, for just one more show?" may refer to the band's experience headlining the 1993 Lollapalooza festival, with Corgan calling it the "old job". Along with other parts of the album, Corgan appears to compare himself to Jesus Christ, with the line "Jesus was an only son / Tell me I'm the chosen one".

Butterfly wings

Butterfly wings is most commonly used as a reference to the chaos theory or the butterfly effect, coming from the idea that a butterfly can flap one wing and cause chaos, and flap the other to cause peace.

Butterfly wings may refer to:

See Butterfly for information about the wings of butterflys themselves.