Smashing Pumpkins Sue Virgin Records Over Pepsi Promotion

The Smashing Pumpkins filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against Virgin Records after the label used the band's name in a "Pepsi Stuff" promotion without permission. Billy Corgan and crew are alleging Virgin had no right to involve the band in promotional deals and that the only deal in place with Virgin is the label's right to sell digital downloads of the band's songs. In the lawsuit, the Pumpkins say they would "never grant such authority to Virgin, or any other entity" and that the Pepsi deal threatens their "artistic integrity." Virgin, who has counted Smashing Pumpkins on its roster for seventeen years, have yet to comment on the suit.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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