Adore is the fourth studio album by American alternative rock band the Smashing Pumpkins, released on June 2, 1998, by Virgin Records. After the multi-platinum success of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and a subsequent yearlong world tour, follow-up Adore was considered "one of the most anticipated albums of 1998" by MTV. Recording the album proved to be a challenge as the band members struggled with lingering interpersonal problems, musical uncertainty in the wake of three increasingly successful rock albums, and the departure of drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. Frontman Billy Corgan would later characterize Adore as made by "a band falling apart". Corgan was also going through a divorce and the death of his mother while recording the album.
The result was a much more subdued and electronica-tinged sound that Greg Kot of Rolling Stone magazine called "a complete break with the past". The album divided the Smashing Pumpkins fan base and was not as commercially successful as their previous two albums. However, similar to the band's other releases across the decade, the album was critically acclaimed, becoming the third straight Pumpkins album to be nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Performance, and has retrospectively gained a cult following. A remastered and expanded version of the album was released on CD and vinyl in September 2014 as a part of the band's project to reissue their back catalogue from 1991 to 2000. This is their only album to be recorded as trio, and their first album not to feature an official drummer.
Background
The Smashing Pumpkins had cemented their place as a cultural force with 1995's multi-platinum Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Feeling the limitations of their guitar-driven hard rock sound, the band had started to branch out during the making of Mellon Collie, and, after the chart-topping success of the electronic-leaning "1979", the band zeroed in on electronica. As the sprawling and massively successful Infinite Sadness tour wound down, Billy Corgan found himself facing many difficult issues, including musical burnout, the absence of his "best friend and musical soul mate in the band" Jimmy Chamberlin, the end of his marriage, and the death of his mother to cancer.
During this period, the band released two new singles on movie soundtracks—"Eye" and "The End Is the Beginning Is the End". Both songs incorporated electronic elements, yet retained the hard rock elements of the band's previous material; one reviewer called the two singles "balls-out, full-energy chargers" and wrote off the Pumpkins' previous remarks that the upcoming album would "rock" less. However, the new album material Corgan was writing consisted mainly of simple acoustic songs. Corgan, James Iha, D'arcy Wretzky, and Matt Walker spent a few days in the studio in February 1997 laying down demos mostly as live takes, and the band hoped to quickly record an entire album in such a manner. Corgan, hoping to maintain the band's progressive rock-inspired experimentation, soon had second thoughts about this approach and began envisioning a hybrid of folk rock and electronica that was at once "ancient" and "futuristic".
Recording
The Smashing Pumpkins started demoing in February 1997 and recorded 30 songs for the album which, at one point, looked set to be a double album. The band subsequently cut the number of tracks on the album to 14.
After playing several festival dates in summer 1997, the band began working at a variety of Chicago studios with producer Brad Wood—with whom Corgan previously had worked in the early 1990s. While Mellon Collie had mostly been recorded with the full participation of all the band members, the band dynamics during the new sessions soon muddled as Corgan, uninspired by his bandmates, worked mostly alone. Wood, too, was leaving Corgan unsatisfied, so, after six weeks in Chicago, the band—minus Wood and Matt Walker—relocated to Los Angeles and started work at Sunset Sound, with Corgan now the de facto producer.
The band rented a house, and hoped living communally would foster good relations and a happier recording environment. According to Corgan, Iha refused to live in the house and rarely visited. The recording sessions continued to be slow-moving and heavily technical. In the absence of a drummer, the band used a drum machine as it had in its earliest incarnation. The band also enlisted Joey Waronker, of Beck's band, and Matt Cameron, of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, for a few songs each. Bon Harris of Nitzer Ebb contributed electronic sequencing and sounds to eight album tracks, with the band giving him mostly free rein.