But you're sure you could be right
If you held yourself up to the light
And the embers never fade
In your city by the lake
The place where you were born
Believe
Believe in me
Believe, believe"
"Tonight, Tonight" is an Alternative Rock song recorded by The Smashing Pumpkins. The second song of their double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness — hence, the second song of its first disc, Dawn to Dusk — it was released as a single on April 15, 1996 in Europe, and June 11, 1996 in the United States.
The song was conceived during the tour to promote their prior album Siamese Dream. Lyrically, it was a homage to Cheap Trick. Written by lead singer Billy Corgan, it was a message to himself, based on his escape from an abusive childhood. The orchestral theme was recorded with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and composed by Corgan and Audrey Riley.
Critically, "Tonight, Tonight" has been termed as one of the band's finest songs, but what it lacked in commercial success as a single — peaking at #36 on the Billboard Hot 100, lower than "1979" or even "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" — it made up for with a dynamite music video.
An homage to Georges M茅li猫s' 1902 film A Trip to the Moon, the video had the theme of a colorized early silent film which was directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. It starred Tom Kenny and Jill Talley, at the time known as cast members on Mr. Show. The music video would become one of the most well-known of The '90s, winning six Moonmen at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards, including the overall Video of the Year award, and being nominated for Best Music Video, Short Form at the 39th Grammy Awards in 1997. In 2006, Stylus magazine placed it at #40 on their list of the best music videos of all time.
Not to be confused with the similarly-named 2011 song ("Tonight Tonight", lacking the comma in the title) by Hot Chelle Rae, the 1957 song with a single "Tonight" from the musical West Side Story, or the 1986 song with three Tonights by Genesis.
The music video can be seen here
on YouTube.
"Believe, believe: that tropes can change, that you're not stuck in vain":
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Once they break free of their ropes, the couple team up to mow through the aliens and get to their escape ship.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Just like its inspiration. They even use umbrellas to land on the Moon. They also don't experience re-entry heating when returning to Earth.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: The aliens pop when hit.
- Homage: To 1902's A Trip to the Moon. The Moon even looks like the Moon in that film, except it doesn't take a spacecraft to the eye.
- I Am the Band: Largely averted in this music video, as Iha, Wretzky, and Chamberlain all have conspicuous solo shots.
- Let Me at Him!: The man puts up his dukes at one of the aliens. The woman pulls him back, and whacks it and another with her umbrella.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: At the end of the music video, while the couple is being rescued from the ocean by a convenient ship, the Moon can be seen crying.
- Retro Universe: In the music video, the band is decked out for the theme of the film, down to the instruments they play: James Iha plays a Gibson harp guitar, D'Arcy Wretzky plays a Gibson mandobass (which is a slight case of Anachronism Stew, as it's a 1924 model), and Jimmy Chamberlain plays a shoulder-slung snare drum similar to the type of drum that would be played by a young military drummer.
- Shown Their Work: Maybe unintentionally, but the original A Trip to the Moon was shown in color on its original release. So the music video being in color wouldn't necessarily be out of place.
- Steampunk: The music video is even more fantastic than its inspiration, as the couple travel to the Moon on a zeppelin.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: When they return, the couple crashes into the ocean. They are taken in by Neptune, and watch a concert by mermaids. It's not until they are sent back to the surface that they are put in air bubbles.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The aliens on the Moon are initially merely curious about the Human visitors. It's only after the woman pops the first two that they are captured. That being said, it's not quite as bad as the original film—an overt satire of (among other things) colonialism and imperialism where the astronauts indiscriminately slaughter scores of native aliens, assassinate the king of the Moon, and take one of the aliens back to Earth to be paraded.
