Remember When a Misunderstood Song by The Smashing Pumpkins Got Banned in 1993

By the early ’90s, the Smashing Pumpkins had solidified their place within the mainstream success of the band’s second album, Siamese Dream. The wistful “Cherub Rock” and “Today” became part of the soundtrack for a disenchanted. Then there was “Disarm,” a song Smashing Pumpkins’ frontman Billy Corgan wrote about his frayed relationship with his parents.

When he was 3, Corgan’s parents divorced, which left him bouncing from home to home and eventually settling and spending time with his stepmother, while his mostly absent father, who was also a musician, was on the road.

“Disarm” came out of a place of feeling forgotten by his parents. “I never really had the guts to kill my parents,” Corgan once said, “so I wrote a song about it instead.” 

Disarm you with a smile
And cut you like you want me to
Cut that little child
Inside of me and such a part of you

Ooh, the years burn
Ooh, the years burn

I used to be a little boy
So old in my shoes
And what I choose is my choice
What’s a boy supposed to do?
The killer in me is the killer in you, my love
I send this smile over to you

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Disarm you with a smile
And leave you like they left me here
To wither in denial
The bitterness of one who’s left alone

Ooh, the years burn
Ooh, the years burn, burn, burn

“I didn’t grow up with my mother, and that’s really f–ked me up,” Corgan told Spin in 1993. “I grew up with my stepmother. My parents got divorced, and I went to live with my great-grandmother, then I lived with my grandmother, then I went to live with my father and his new wife. My father was a musician; he was gone all the time, so she was, in essence, my mother. I consider her my mother, still.”

Eventually, his father divorced his second wife, and Corgan and his younger brothers continued living with her. Corgan said he lived an hour away from his natural parents but never with them. “That has had a lot of really harsh effects on my life, things that I’ve only figured out recently,” said Corgan.

“When I wrote the lyrics for this record,” he added, “I would just sit down at the typewriter and just type pages and pages, and then when I came to a line that made me cringe with embarrassment, that’s the one I would use.”

The BBC Ban

Though the subject matter of “Disarm” was still fairly heavy, the BBC misinterpreted the lyrics and believed it was a song condoning abortion—Cut that little child / Inside of me and such a part of you … The killer in me is the killer in you. 

The BBC also linked the song to a recent death in the UK at the time of 2-year-old James Bulger, who was murdered by two 10-year-olds. As a result, the song got limited radio airplay, and the BBC banned it from being performed on Top of the Pops. Corgan was asked to change the line cut that little child, but he refused.

Despite its misunderstood lyrics, “Disarm” still managed to reach the top 20 in the UK and several other countries. In the U.S., “the song “Disarm” peaked at No. 5 on the Mainstream Rock chart and still remains a Smashing Pumpkins classic.

When the Smashing Pumpkins performed on Top of the Pops for the first time on February 5, 1996, they didn’t perform “Disarm” but “Tonight, Tonight” from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. 

Photo: Paul Bergen/Redferns