There’s something about the music played on the radio at the time you were eleven or twelve years old. Despite hindsight’s best efforts, the songs and artists that populated the airwaves then (whenever then was) have a way of taking up permanent residence on your list of all time favorites. Tracks that, released today, you’d probably label kitschy or derivative get filtered through nostalgic ears to become classic, quirky, carefree fun—I mean, seriously, how does “Tubthumping” not annoy the shit out of me? I distinctly remember the year I decided to ditch my parents’ preferred oldies frequency in favor of the “cool” alt rock station out of Windsor.

It was 1996, and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness had just been released. “1979” seemed to come on about every other song, and that was a good thing. I’d like to be able to objectively say Billie Corgan’s wistful ode to his own teenage years is a legitimately great song, and one I’d like just as much had it been released four months, four years, four decades ago, whatever—honestly, though, I don’t know if that’s true. Hours spent listening through the FM static have made impartiality an impossibility when it comes to virtually anything recorded between the years 1990 and 2000. Anyhoo, this is all a (very) roundabout way of saying I’ll be starting a weekly post called “Thursday Throwback” that spotlights radio hits (both major and minor) from the decade that proved a gateway drug to my current infatuation. Here’s the aforementioned “1979,” a legitimately great song off the Smashing Pumpkins’ third straight (and sadly last) great album. Apologies to Adore aficionados—it’s just not that good.