By Declan Devilbiss

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:: Declan’s nostalgic penmanship is sure to reignite anyone’s youth  

:: October 19, 2026

:: We sprinted up the stairs and climbed over everyone in our row just as the drums kicked in for “1979.” My girlfriend and I snagged tickets for the Smashing Pumpkins concert way back in May, so our excitement had been simmering for months. It was the anniversary tour for Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and it seemed like along with my mom, the entire Gen X population of Maryland was there reliving their teenage years. The fans were still wearing black leather, heavy eyeshadow and spiky bracelets, but they were now going a little gray. In our section, everyone stayed seated. The Smashing Pumpkins absolutely killed their set, but as the performance went on and I looked around the crowd, I wondered: “What does it mean when music that’s so synonymous with youth, rebellion and angst gets old?”

In the music video for “1979,” teenagers do donuts in a Dodge Charger, revel on a mountain and get plastered at a house party. Even though I wasn’t cool enough to do all that stuff in high school, the song and video drench me in nostalgia. Nostalgia I have no right to be feeling at 20. “The street heats the urgency of now.” The present, both infinite and impossible to grasp, demands to be lived while we’re still young enough to see its potential. This stuff is all over the album: “Tonight, Tonight” is one of the greatest musical embodiments of carpe diem ever written.

With that worship of the here and now, there’s a deep sadness. “Time is never time at all,” Billy Corgan croons to begin “Tonight, Tonight.” “You can never ever leave, without leaving a piece of youth.” For all the reverie that comes with being 20, there’s something nagging the back of my mind, telling me it won’t be like this soon. You can even see it in the faraway look in the eyes of the kids in the “1979” video. They might physically be doing donuts and getting wasted, but what does tomorrow bring? Thirty years later, where are those kids? Even as Corgan insists that “you can make it last forever,” I wonder if he really believed it.

As I looked around at the concert and saw a sea of people 30 years older than me, I thought about that impermanence. All those people were once in my shoes, listening to the Smashing Pumpkins, savoring the present and lamenting inevitable change. Now, most of them probably have decent jobs, a 401k and a mortgage. Part of me wanted to shake the older fans who were sitting for most of the show and remind them what this music made them feel like decades ago, how it made them want to dance, to jump, to scream, to cry. Even Corgan seemed a little frustrated, joking that the fans were saving their energy to hit the club after the show.

But still, it struck me how remarkable it is that thirty years later, the fans continue to show up and support this band that colored their youth. 1995 was a long time ago, but the moment still demands to be seized. Even with actual responsibilities and fully-formed frontal lobes, Mellon Collie reminds aging listeners to grab the people they love and take nothing for granted. I think “Galapogos,” my favorite Pumpkins’ song, expresses it perfectly: even though he’s losing his youth, Corgan says he “won’t deny the change.” Better to gracefully embrace the truth than live in denial. Even if the energy was a little weak, it was striking to see a bunch of 50-year-olds so bound together by a single album.

The way older generations attached to single songs and albums is inextricably tied to the way they listened to music. Every time a song from Siamese Dream comes on, my mom tells us how she had the album on a nonstop loop when she was 15 years old, doing her geometry homework. Bands like the Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam and Oasis became the backdrop of everyday life when all you owned were ten albums, which had to be listened to front-to-back.

I wonder if there’s an artist, album or song that we’ll really be able to say defined our collective youth. Streaming has made our listening so atomized that we don’t have much shared musical experience; it’s hard to come up with a mainstream band or artist that’s transforming the musical landscape, or has the emotional staying power that the Smashing Pumpkins do. I hate to say it, but I can’t see myself at a Playboi Carti concert 30 years from now, reminiscing about the 2020s.

Despite that, I hope I’m still going to concerts when I’m 50, even if I’m not standing the whole time. Thirty years from now I expect I’ll be a little less impulsive and have a lot less energy. But instead of kidding myself and trying to make youth last forever, I hope the music of my youth reminds me to embrace change. Nostalgia doesn’t have to be depressing. By reliving the past, you can embrace the urgency of now.

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