Billy Corgan Claims Rock Was Deliberately Marginalized — Joseph Kahn Argues Political Correctness Killed It

Last December on his The Magnificent Others podcast, Billy Corgan shared some insights about the apparent dark inner workings of the music industry. The Smashing Pumpkins bandleader claimed that George W. Bush’s White House tried to enlist him in an influence campaign and hinted at a conspiracy to sideline rock music's impact in the culture. This episode was a conversation with Conrad Flynn, the occult historian who went viral in certain corners for referencing Nurse With Wound on The Tucker Carlson Show a couple of months earlier.

Late in that episode, after he and Flynn discussed which musicians were shapeshifters, Corgan theorized about rock music's decline in mainstream popularity: "Rock was the greatest single social-changing force of the 20th century," he said. "And here we are 25 years into the 21st century and rock couldn't be any less of an influence on the social political order. Does anybody think that that's kind of strange that somebody decided to push a button somewhere and make sure that people like myself don't say certain things anymore?"

Corgan had Flynn back for another Magnificent Others podcast last week and they expanded on their thoughts. The musician offered that "pop had more connectivity to Satanism than rock music" and speculated about why rock stopped being as mainstream around the time the Pumpkins released Adore:

I think rock has been purposefully dialed down in the culture [since the late '90s]... I saw the gravity shift. If you were at MTV or around MTV, 1997, '98, suddenly they decided rock was out when rock was still very, very high up in the thing. And it was replaced by rap. They immediately changed — their standards and practices immediately shifted. So now the things that weren't allowed were suddenly allowed. People were waving guns. OK? So some people assert that the CIA was involved into that — again, above my pay grade. But I saw it happen. I did witness it happen. And of course, great music came out of it, so it's not like it's a barren wasteland where something was pushed in that replaced something. Qualitative things and great artists came in, but there was this overt shift. I saw it happen. And then now, rap seems to be waning in terms of its cultural influence. Pop is completely dominant. Rock is probably the most dominant ticket-selling thing in the western world, and yet there's almost no representation of rock in culture. So why do we have that schism? I think they purposefully dialed down the ability of rock stars to have a voice in the culture. Or, those who exist within the ecosystem are basically, you know, they'll color between the lines so they don't have to worry about that.

Joseph Kahn, as far as I can tell, has never worked with the Smashing Pumpkins. But the big-deal music video director has worked with some of the most mainstream pop and rap music of the 21st century. He won Grammys for directing Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" and Eminem's "Without Me" videos, for example. Responding to an X post about Corgan's recent podcast comments, Kahn offered a different theory:

Rock died when it separated itself from sex. Did a video for a huge rock band and they argued over "the male gaze." PC and rock is death. Everyone would rather be Rolling Stone Magazine than the Rolling Stones. Music is ultimately driven by horny teenagers and they fled to rap.

Any guesses what video he was referring to? (The All-American Rejects' "Sandbox" and and the Jonas Brothers' "What A Man Gotta Do" are the only ones he's directed for bands in the past eight years).

Kurt Loder, who covered Smashing Pumpkins extensively back in the '90s, chimed in too. Check out the episode and the relevant tweets below.