During a new chat with Apple Music's Zane Lowe, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan touched upon the cultural void left by the 1994 suicide of his friend and Nirvana leader, Kurt Cobain.
Corgan went on to explain that with Cobain's talent suddenly plucked from the universe, he believed his writing was head and shoulders above the rest of his peers: “I want the Pumpkins standing on the heap of our generation and if that means I have to write 800 songs to do it — I'll do it. I ain't shy about that. I will go down as saying Kurt was the most talented guy of our generation. Kurt had so much talent it was, like, frightening. It was, like, a John Lennon-level of talent, where you were, like, 'How can you have all this talent?' — or Prince. But, Kurt's not here, y'know, sadly. So, I looked around and I was, like, 'I can beat the rest of 'em, for sure.'”